Some mornings he was greeted with the beautiful sight of a controlled waiting room that housed a few stragglers; he’d always sworn he’d kiss Jack on the mouth the day the night attending managed to gift him with totally empty chairs. Other mornings, patients seemed to just ooze from every nook and cranny available; if there was an inch left unfilled, someone would find a way to squeeze in. Robby hated those mornings. 

Today, though, was a good mix of both. The chairs weren’t completely empty—one more day he didn’t have to kiss Jack—but the room wasn’t overflowing either. One could say it was a perfect middle, but Robby didn’t even know if the word perfect was on the do-not-ever-say-in-an-ER word list. So he kept the word and let it rattle around his brain while he waited for the metal detector. He passed through just fine (like always) with a quirk of a smile shared with the security guard. 

His backpack strap dug into his right shoulder, and his helmet swung against his lower back with each step. He hadn’t wanted to bring it, but a promise to wear it more often even if he took the extra safety course not to was still a promise. It had made his scalp sweaty and flattened his thinning hair. He could live with a few bad-hair mornings, but he couldn’t live with a crackled skull and a brain bleed. 

Well, that’s at least what you told him the night he left for his sabbatical after nearly hitting him in the head with his half-helmet. Since then, he’d gone on his trip with a brand-new full-face helmet and came back with a lighter soul and a better outlook on life. Was he 100% better? No. After what he’s seen and gone through, Robby doesn’t think he’ll ever be perfectly sound. 

But what was life without a dash of trauma? 

However, that didn’t give him any more excuses for the way he had acted. For the past few months since his return, he’d spent countless hours rebuilding bridges he’d burned. Now, he could look at Frank without seeing blinding guilt. Now, he could carry a conversation with Samira without needing to pull her life apart. Now, he could ask for Jack’s shoulder to lean on without feeling like it was a sign of weakness. 

He'd hurt a lot of people in the wake of his anger and self-hatred; he knew that more than anyone. Yet, the only way left to go was up, and he’d been enjoying life the entire ride. 

“Hey, brother,” he greeted upon seeing Jack near the nurses station conversing with Lena. “Chairs look manageable.” 

Jack raised an eyebrow his way. “Would it kill you to actually compliment me every once in a while? Jeez, I spend 12 hours making sure you can handle everything, and all I get is Chairs look manageable.” 

If it was anyone other than Robby, they’d probably think Jack were serious. But the slight smirk and the attempt to get his timber parallel to Robby’s gave everything away. 

Robby eyed the patient screen and cross his arms. “Jefferson is back in twelve? What visit number is this? Ten?” 

Jack groaned at the name. “He came in swearing his heart had moved into his stomach. Gave him Vistaril, and he was out like a light. He can probably be discharged in an hour or so.” 

“Haven’t tried that one yet. Who suggested Vistaril? If you’re sure he can be discharged that soon it must have worked.” 

The corner of Jack’s mouth rose higher. “Who do you think? Brother, I swear she’s turning into you one day at a time.” He paused before adding, “It’s concerning.” 

Robby’s mind immediately brought you to the front, and he couldn’t help but smirk in prideful satisfaction. He hadn’t meant to take you under his wing; it just happened naturally over the course of your final year as a med student. You’d been grouped in with Dennis, Trinity, and Victoria as a second MS4 and worked through the literal shift from hell in the aftermath of the Pittfest shooting. But through it all, Robby had seen how well you handled yourself. 

You took charges with a straight face and a nod. You obeyed orders and pushed back when necessary, seemingly knowing more than attendings half the time. You were observant and thoughtful, but he’d also seen you loud and laughing during park meetups for beers when you weren’t even old enough to drink yet. Yet you stayed for the fellowship and comfort of your peers after bad shifts. 

If Robby hated the way he treated everyone else, he wanted to walk off the roof at the thought of the way he treated you. In your good and innocent nature, you tried to help your mentor, but Robby had been too blind to see it and pushed you away any time he received an inkling of your goodwill. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed until he was certain you hated him; it would make everything easier because he wasn’t too sure he was coming back. 

But then, as he was talking to that sweet, abandoned baby, you’d come in with another full force of determination. You’d dragged him out by his pull over sleeve and yelled at him for about ten minutes with tears in your eyes. While he listened, his stomach twisted at the thought of being the cause of your tears. He barely dodged the half helmet when you launched it at him, not even wincing after it landed with a sharp crack. 

That sound woke something lost inside him.  

It was why he got to smile and tease with Jack so early in the morning. It was why he got to build a co-worker relationship with Baran. It was why he got to look forward to jesting with you about your latest interests. 

Robby looked around the department. “You know where she is?” 

“Why? You wanna talk to her about Criminal Minds?” Lena chimed in with a knowing smirk. 

You getting Robby into random shows and growing his personal interest list was something the two of you always yapped about when you worked doubles. Just like you had with Robby, you managed to carve a you-shaped bit out of everyone’s hearts. 

Jack looked over at him with a shocked impression. “Did she finally talk you into watching it?” 

Robby rubbed the back of his neck. “She thought it would help knowing that pyschos walk among us. I just think she doesn’t want me to take another solo vacation ever.” He bent his head before looking back up. “Slept with my lamp on for the first time since I was ten.” 

“And it does not get any less creepy,” Lena mentioned. “Season 9 was awful.” 

“I think she’s sleeping in an on-call room. She yawned about twelve times until I finally sent her off to dreamland,” Jack finally answered his initial question. “But before you go stomping to find your kid, can I talk to you for a second?” His head jerked to the side over his shoulder. 

Robby’s eye brows pinched, but he nodded anyway. Jack pushed off the counter and walked in the direction of the side hallway, his gate a bit limpy from a full night on his prosthesis. When he finally stopped a bit around the corner, he crossed his arms. 

“What’s up?” Robby asked, but his tone was flat. “Did Myrna get away again?” 

Jack’s lip twitched, but it failed to bloom into a full smile and instead slid half-way into a frown. “Do you remember when Whitaker was living on the eighth floor before his first shift?” 

Robby’s eyes flitted to the ceiling while he thought. “Yeah. He’s rooming with Santos now, yes?” 

“Since their first shift yes. But this isn’t about them.” Jack inhaled so sharply his shoulders raised. “It’s about Y/n.” 

A moment of silence hovered between the two as Jack’s words took root. Robby’s jaw clenched as he sighed heavily. He didn’t know what could be going on with you. Were you going to be sued? Did you accidentally kill a patient? Robby knew how to hide a body. Did you ask for a recommendation letter as a soft launch that you were moving to a different hospital? 

“What about her?” Robby settled on as he shifted his weight between his feet. 

“During shift, she got thrown up on; five-year-old with stomach pain who didn’t lean over quick enough. So, naturally I told her to go change scrubs, and when she came back, she was good as new. I didn’t think anything of it, but then I remembered she didn’t bring a bag in with her.” 

Robby didn’t know where this was going. “Brother, just spit it out.” 

“She came back in a Carhartt scrubs, and last I checked the hospital doesn’t dish out name-brand scrubs like that. No bag means no extra change of scrubs to put into a locker.” He glanced over Robby’s shoulder. “Plus, Lena mentioned she saw her go toward the stairwell.” 

“You think she’s living on the eighth floor?” Robby filled in all the gaps. 

Jack rubbed his hands together. “I don’t know, but unless Gloria managed to find enough money to fill the scrub machine with fucking Carhartt then I don’t know what else to think. Has she said anything to you?” 

“Last I knew she was living with her dad.” 

“Her mom?”

Robby pursed his lips before answering. “California.” 

Yet another reminder as to why you reminded Robby of himself. You weren’t abandoned and left with grandparents like he was, but your mom had left you with your dad at a young age. Call it dark humor or bad coping skills, but you and he had bonded through it all. And he did the best he could to make sure you knew having only one parent didn’t make you inferior to others. 

“Damn,” Jack whispered. He rubbed a hand against his jaw. “You think you could talk to her? I would but I know I’m definitely not her favorite attending. That will forever be you, brother.” 

“Get out of here.” Robby lightly pushed Jack’s shoulder. “But yeah, I’ll talk to her when we get a chance. Don’t worry.” 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

When we get a chance happened a lot later than Robby would have liked. 

He had caught you coming out of the on-call room, fresh from a small nap, for a split second before the first trauma of the day came through. And like always, you were right there at his side. 

“Good morning, Dr. Robby,” you greeted while snapping on a pair of gloves. “How was the morning sun? I can feel myself wasting away without it.” 

Robby glanced your way and smiled. “Then you should stop picking up doubles like they’re going out of style. Soon you’ll be known at the hospital’s resident vampire.” 

“I’m not that pasty. Besides, you’re one to talk; when was the last time you let your skin feel the warmth? You’re always dressed for weather that at least twenty degrees cooler, old man.” 

“You’re getting snippy with me, kid. Should I be worried?” 

You looked downright proud of yourself. “Oh most definitely.” 

“Man, you two bicker like you’re related,” Trinity muttered after taking a place at your opposite side. “It’s disgusting.” 

“It’s therapeutic,” Robby responded. “Isn’t that right?” 

“Yes, dad,” you snarked. “I love that you’d rather do this than go to actual therapy. What would Dr. Abbot think?” 

“What can I say? It’s a work in progress.” 

“Incoming people!” Dana yelled behind the two of you. “Going right into room 1.” 

In less than a second, the ambulance bay doors slid open with their familiar electronic hiss. When the gurney passed through, you and Robby were immediately on it like bees with sugar water. The paramedic next to you began to list their findings.

“Twenty-eight-year-old-female. Pedestrian struck, at approximately twenty-five miles an hour. Brief loss of consciousness at the scene, never regained. GCS eight. Airway maintained with an OPA. No meds given en route.” 

You followed both Trinity and Robby into the open Trauma Room 1 and gripped the side rails. Your head turned so you could face Robby and wait for him to proceed. 

He nodded your way and then Trinity’s. “On my count. One, two, three.” 

The patient was quickly transferred onto the trauma bed with a few grunts like normal. You had to swallow down a joke about Robby’s bad back. Your fingers found the familiar tubing of your stethoscope as you pulled it off your neck and placed the headset into your ears while you dragged the bell across the patient’s chest. 

“Airway’s patent,” Robby called out. 

“And breath sounds equal bilaterally,” you said before wrapping your instrument back around your neck. 

“Vitals?” 

Perlah had been the nurse to slip in with you. She took a quick glance at the monitors. “BP 180 over 72; heart rate 104. Statting ninety-eight with supplemental oxygen.” Her voice was clear above the overlapping beeping. 

Robby nodded and took the smallest step back, so that he was more over your shoulder. “Time to shine, kids.” 

“How are you this chipper in the mornings,” Trinity bemoaned. She quickly flashed her penlight while holding up the woman’s eyelids. “Pupils are equal and reactive.”

“Jack’s recently gotten me into sunrise yoga.” 

“That’s key word for he was too scared to sleep after watching TV,” you jested while you did a quick feel around her head and scalp. “There’s a small occipital laceration. How’d you like episode four, Dr. Robby?” 

Robby gave an overdramatic shiver. “Let’s just say I will be looking out for religious OCD tendencies in college kids from now on.” He tilted his head towards the woman. “Does the lac explain her GCS?” 

“Nope,” you answered. 

“Good.” 

“Wait,” Trinity said, “did you finally get him to start Criminal Minds?” 

“Against my will,” Robby muttered. “She threatened me and my family if I didn’t.” 

“Did not.” You cut through her shirt with the sheers like a hot knife through butter. “No obvious long bone deformities. I just told him that he needs to start watching TV more; fill his down time with things other than reading medical journals older than me.” 

“There’s nothing wrong about being informed, Dr. L/n. Santos?” 

“She has a point.” Trinity looked up from where she was pushing down on the woman’s sternum and chest area. “Chest wall is stable and clean.” 

You moved on to her abdomen and began gentle yet firm palpitations with straight fingers. When you hit a particularly soft spot, you paused and then pressed again. “Her stomach is soft.” 

Robby was behind your shoulder in two steps. “Keep going down,” he softly instructed. 

Your fingers continued until you reached her pelvis, and that’s when you felt the smallest shift to the bone. With another small prod, you felt it again. “Pelvic instability.” 

“So, it’s a high-energy injury?” Trinity asked, also coming up to your other side to get a look. 

“And?” Robby prompted. 

“Potential for major hemorrhage,” you stated knowingly. 

“Exactly.”

“Pressure’s one-oh-eight over sixty-eight,” Perlah announced the lowered number from near the woman’s head. 

“Is she normotensive?” you asked. 

“No.” 

You and Trinity glanced toward the monitors and then back down to where your fingers stayed sill against her skin and pelvis. You moved your fingers off and stepped away. “Then if she’s not normotensive, she’s bleeding.” You didn’t wait for Robby’s next step, already grabbing the FAST machine and rolling it near the edge of the bed. You squeezed gel onto the probe before handing it off to Trinity. 

She was quiet for a few seconds while she moved the probe around. “No obvious free fluid.” 

You looked back up to Robby whose brown eyes were still narrowed as he watched the two of you work. It didn’t take long to notice how much he’d changed since coming back. Before, he might have stepped in while talking down at you because it didn’t automatically click. Now, he stayed eerily calm and let you learn. 

“What doesn’t FAST see well?” 

“Retroperitoneal bleeding,” you blurted without a beat of thinking. 

That earned you a satisfied nob from Robby. “And what’s sitting in the retroperitoneum?” 

You and Trinity both looked back down and answered simultaneously, “The pelvis.” 

“There you go,” Robby replied while turning back into a structured attending. “Pelvic binder please?” 

Trinity reached for it and gave it over. In practiced, rhythmic motions that you could only dream of achieving one day, Robby situated the binder into place. Every time he did something like this, you couldn’t help but imagine you in his shoes. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea to have Robby as a mentor, but anyone else (besides Jack) wouldn’t burn as bright in your eyes. You chose to stay on the day shift once you were invited back for your first year of residency alongside Dennis. Even if you were younger than the average age of 26—you were the Pitt’s second residential baby genius—you soaked up lessons like a 22-year-old sponge.  

“Perlah, activate massive transfusion protocol if that pressure drops again,” Robby ordered. 

“Copy.” 

“CT as soon as she’s stable enough to leave the bay. Ortho and trauma surgery will be happy campers once she gets sent up.” He double checked the binder before stepping back from the bed and ripping off his nitrile gloves.  

You and Trinity mirrored the action and threw them away once you stepped back into the main hub. By now, patients were idling around while the day shift nurses and doctors walked around and evaded incoming gurneys like it was second nature. Trinity had barely gotten two steps when Garcia passed her with a look. 

“Santos walk with me for a minute and tell me about your hit pedestrian,” she stated without stopping. 

“Have fuuuunnn,” you drew out while sending a wink her way. 

She, in return, sent you a beautiful middle finger before disappearing back into the trauma room. You stood there for a moment, letting the Pitt move in waves around you, until you felt a nudge against your arm. Turning, you found Robby looking down at you expectedly. 

“Yeah?” you asked. 

He nodded his head toward the breakroom. “Did you have breakfast yet?” 

“Did you?”

“Touche. However, it looks like they have this covered—” 

“For now.”

Robby gave you a look that screamed Please let me finish and get to my point before we continue the familial bickering. “Like I was saying. They have this covered, and it looks like you’ve yet to get your first cup of coffee in your system.” 

You glanced back towards the breakroom and gave in quicker than you should have. “Fine. But if we’re out of the brown sugar creamer then I’m using your card to UberEATS Dunkin.” 

Robby scoffed playfully as he started walking. “My card?” 

“Man, you must be getting really old if you forgot you said you owed me a coffee because of last week’s distended joint reduction.” 

“Ha!” he barked loudly before reaching over to ruffle your hair. “I did do that, didn’t I?” 

“Been dreaming of an iced 32-ounce toasted french vanilla ever since.” 

“You’re either going to have no teeth or early onset type-two diabetes by the time you’re thirty,” he muttered as he held the door open to the breakroom. You slipped past him and approached the fridge. “Especially if you keep drinking coffees with the name Toasted French Vanilla.” 

“Aha!” You triumphantly held up the brown sugar creamer. “Looks like your card lives to see another day.” Without turning to look at him, you started up the Nespresso. “Hey, do you think Gloria would approve getting us an actual espresso maker?” 

Robby ran a hand down his face and sighed heavily. “She won’t even approve a full staff of nurses.” 

“Maybe we should take an offering for one. You think I could get Frank to cough up fifty bucks?” you mused. “If he has enough money for a golden doodle, he has enough money to hand over for a decent shot of espresso.” 

The Nespresso sputtered to life, and you took in a deep inhale of the rich and warm, dark-roast scent. 

“My dad has one,” you suddenly said after a moment. “Love making my lattes in the morning, but since I’m not—” The words died on your tongue. 

Behind you, Robby straightened slightly at your failed sentence. He had been looking for a way to bring up the possibility of you sleeping or even living on the eighth floor, and you’d just given him an in. Yet, he stayed quiet, wanting to see if you’d try to salvage the small slip up. 

To a degree, you tried your best. 

“But since I’m pulling more doubles,” you fixed, “I’m barely awake enough on my regular days to make one. John’s actually been ordering me coffees before handoffs.” 

Robby licked his lips. “You know anything about living on the eighth floor?” 

In any other situation, the question would have come out of the blue, but by the way your shoulders tensed and the way you set the creamer back down onto the counter with a little too much force, Robby knew immediately that Jack’s suspicions had been correct. His heart clenched achingly. 

You bit down on your bottom lip while trying not to let tears weld in your eyes. You thought you’d been doing a good job at hiding. You waited in the bathroom until it was safe to slip up the stairs. Sometimes you even rounded the building to go up the backway just to make sure no one would notice that you didn’t walk in the correct direction. 

Inhaling a shuddering breath, you looked down at your sad excuse of a latte. “How-how long have you known?” you croaked. 

“Not long. Jack may have mentioned it this morning.” 

You looked over your shoulder with pinched brows. “What? Dr. Abbot? How—” You paused again. “Fuck; my scrub change.” 

“Your scrub change,” he confirmed but didn’t move. He’d let you turn around at your own pace. “He didn’t tattle, but he was worried. The eighth floor isn’t suitable for living, no matter what praises Dennis has sung about it.” 

That was an attempt at a small joke, but even it didn’t manage to make you laugh. Instead, you seemed to hunch in more on yourself. 

Shame Robby’s mind filled in. You were ashamed to be caught like this. 

“Yeah, well, med school was expensive, and uh, when you’re kicked out, you’re left with very few options,” you muttered, utterly exasperated to the new lows you’d had stooped to.  

Something broke inside Robby’s chest. “Kicked out?” 

“Yeah.” You finally turned around to face him, but your eyes stayed glued to the cup in your hands. “Apparently, he wanted me to start paying rent?” you voice quivered with unsureness. “And when I told him it would be a few weeks before I could get one payment together because he set the price incredibly high, he told me I could pay it by end of the week, or I could gather my things and leave. I was out by sunset.” 

“Jeez, kid,” he whispered, tone absolutely horrified at the news. “How long ago was that?” 

When you gave him a sheepish grin, his stomach dropped even further. 

“Uh, a week before you got back from your sabbatical.” 

He blinked incredulously. “What? Fucking—I’ve been back for two months ago.” His jaw dropped slightly before closing, bottom teeth connecting with a loud cht. “You’ve been living there for two months?” 

“Two months and a week,” you tried weakly, but by Robby’s face, your joke didn’t land. “I didn’t want anyone knowing.” 

Robby shoved his hands into his pocket. “Why? You know we implemented housing allowances after Dennis . . .” 

You shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s embarrassing. I had it covered, and really, eight floor isn’t that bad.” 

“Kid, we turned the heat off up there every night for a week just last month because of the new router system.” Dread quickly filled Robby’s soul before a wave of dead-seriousness exuded from his pores. “You lived without heat while Pittsburgh went through temps close to zero; do you know realize how insane that is?” 

Again, your shoulders lifted like you hadn’t really thought about that. “I’m still here. Why’d you think I pulled so many doubles?” 

“You—” Robby shook his head. “Did your dad let you take much?” 

“Just a few clothes and personal things. Whatever I couldn’t fit in my car, I had to leave. Tried texting him once about coming back for the rest, but I think he blocked my number. All the messages turned green.” 

“And your car?” 

“Sold it,” you managed to say. “Might have someplace to live, but I’m still paying off thousands of dollars of debt, and I still need to eat. Throw on extra items like toiletries and supplies, selling your car doesn’t seem as bad as starving.” 

Robby wanted to hug you in that moment. He wanted to bring you into his chest and hold you there while telling you everything would be all right. Instead he swallowed thickly and nodded along. You still stood on the opposite side of the table. 

Yet, an idea itched at his brain to the point he couldn’t keep it in anymore. 

“What if I told you . . . that I had a spare room,” he said slowly, testing out the waters of your situation. He didn’t know if you’d even accept his offer, but he couldn’t just stand there without saying something. 

Because, even through all the teasing from everyone, this was his mini-me; this was you. And he rather damn himself right to hell than let you keep sleeping and living on the fucking eight floor of his hospital. 

He was glad you didn’t start yelling, didn’t tell him he was crazy for mentioning this to you in the first place. So, he kept talking. 

“It hasn’t been touched since I moved in, but there’s a bed—a queen—with clean sheets and a window that faces away from the sun, so the room stays pretty dark. I have a pool; Jack stays over sometimes, but he’s asked for my couch in the will so . . .” 

That managed to make you snort softly. 

“You can think about it. There isn’t exactly a list of residents waiting for an open house. I’ve heard the roommate is terrible though,” he self-deprecated, not knowing what else to really say. “He snores, and he’s old, and lately he has to sleep with the lamp on because the TV show his coworker suggested is a little too real to not be scared about.” 

“Oh, I’m sure,” you added with a smile. “Does the room come with an espresso machine?” 

“I’m sure he can manage to get one delivered by the end of the day.” 

You twisted the coffee cup in your hands. “Can I think about it?” 

Robby would have rather you straight out accept, but he knew how your mind ticked. If you accepted too quickly, you would think you were being needy and pathetic. But if you didn’t accept, you were throwing away a perfectly fine offer, something that could be taken away and given to someone else. 

Well, Robby wouldn’t do that to you. The moment you confirmed everything, his spare room was yours to take and would be even if you didn’t end up accepting. Because even if you didn’t, he would start pushing for you to apply for the housing allowance.  

He mustered the warmest smile he could, crow’s feet crinkling and smile lines pushing his beard up. “Of course. I’ll even get the machine ordered just in case.” 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

At any given point, Robby’s offer haunted you through the rest of your shift. 

Blame it on exhaustion or something else, but your determination to provide for yourself was wearing thin. You liked to joke about Robby’s bad back, but the hard mattress on eight had absolutely killed yours. You’d be lying to yourself and everyone when you said it wasn’t bad, because truly you didn’t know how much closer to hell you could get. Through the chill and then bouts of heat as Pittsburgh’s weather fought itself, you didn’t know how much you could truly last. 

But you hated yourself for ending up in this situation in the first place. Instead of spending money on coffee or buying a new lip gloss every so often, that could have stayed in your savings. Maybe then you would have had enough to keep living in the house you grew up in. Logically, you knew none of this was your fault at all; your dad was just a selfish piece of shit whose goodwill didn’t extend to his blood anymore. 

All of it must have gone to his new side piece that he seemed too wrapped up in to even worry about where you had gone. 

Which was why when you spotted him at the end of your shift, you froze. This was the first time seeing him in months, and he decided to show up to your work?

“Dad?” you questioned, already walking over to him with a rushed pace. “What are you doing here? Are you hurt?” You gave him a once over, but he didn’t seem to be favoring any particular part of his body. “I can get you in a room if you need. Let’s—” 

“I’m here to see if you’re ready to stop being a brat,” he interrupted rather loudly. “You need to stop playing like you’re some hot shot doctor who can take care of themselves.” 

Hot blood rushed into your cheeks, and you fought the urge to look around to see who was listening. Already, you had noticed a few stop in their tracks from the corner of your eye. Saliva pooled around your tongue, and you swallowed thickly. 

“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” you muttered while looking anywhere but his eyes. 

“Don’t lie to my face,” he hissed. “You just weren’t responsible enough to keep a roof over your head. I’ve paid for everything, and I was asking for one thing in return.” He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Ungrateful is what you are.” 

You crossed your arms around your middle in an attempt to shrink in on yourself. “Dad, I wasn’t trying to be ungrateful; you know that. If you had given me a few weeks, I could have put a few things together and—” 

“You’ve had your entire life to save. For twenty-one years I fed you, I got through school, I housed you—” 

“I never—”

“Do not interrupt me!” he yelled, and his voice basically echoed through the quieting ER. “You can start speaking to me like an adult when you aren’t squatting in the damn hospital!” He must have caught the wave of utter humiliation that washed over you because his lips grew stretched a thin smirk. “Your phone is still under my plan, kid. Your location hasn’t changed for two months.” 

Your nails dug into your palms, and you knew that if you looked at them, your fingernails would come back slick and red. Tears pricked at and burned your eyes even with your rapid blinking to rid them. Every ounce of your being wanted to be swallowed up by the earth. 

By now, you were sure everyone was watching your dad tear into you, and you weren’t sure you ever wanted to come back after this. Sure, rumors had grown about Dennis living in the hospital and people eventually had gotten over it, but you saw the way he cringed when people brought it up. You’d rather die than be like that. 

You were about to respond, just to get him to stop talking like a dog rolling on its belly to take the beating, but a large hand coming down to rest on your shoulder stopped any words from forming. You didn’t even have to look to know who was at your shoulder. 

“Do we have a situation here?” Robby’s voice cut cleanly through the bouts of silence.

Your dad scoffed. “Oh, so because you’re out of my house, you’ve got your attending playing dad now? Your immaturity is showing.” 

“No one is playing anything.” Robby didn’t even flinch at the accusation. “As chief attending, it is my job to make sure that the entire staff is well taken care of, and right now sir, you’re disrupting the little peace we have during handoffs.” He took a step forward, effectively cutting you off from your dad’s line of sight. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’re the only one displaying a large amount of immaturity for a grown man by coming here and belittling one of my best residents. So, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, or security will escort you off the premises.” 

You watched as your dad blanched at the threat; he was always one to throw insults and knock you down, but the moment someone did it to him or called him out on his behavior, he cowered. He did try to get one more glare sent your way, but when Amahd stepped away from the wall, your dad scampered off towards the exit. 

Only when you were sure he left, the fight and flight you’d been experiencing since you first spotted your dad melted right out of your body. But that meant you didn’t have the fight to keep the tears from spilling. You tried to wipe uselessly at them, but with each rough swipe, more tears replaced them too quickly to keep up with. In your entire 22 years of life, you’ve never been more devastated and humiliated like you felt right now. 

Thankfully though, Robby seemed to know exactly what to do. 

He kept a hold of your shoulder as he began to steer you in the opposite way of the regular exit. Instead, he walked you right into an empty family room and closed the door behind once he got through. He said nothing, and for a split second, you took that as disappointment from his end. Panic bubbled through your chest, and you did the only thing you knew how to do best: apologize. 

“Dr. Robby, I am so sorry for that. I had no clue he’d be coming, but that’s no excuse for what he did. I’m sorry he made a scene. I-I was going to get him into a room, but then he just started speaking. It’s on me though; I know that. I’ll tell him that he can’t come back. Again, I’m so sorry that everyone had to see that especially those just coming on shift.” You took a deep breath to continue, but Robby held out a hand. 

“First of all,” he said, “you have nothing to apologize for. You hear me? Not putting this lightly, but your dad is a grade-aasshole. He shouldn’t have come in here and said all those things.” 

“He was right though,” you murmured, looking down to your shoes that had a few holes in the sides. “I should have saved instead of buying unnecessary things. And-and I’ve been ungrateful and irresponsible.” You frowned deeply. “What kind of doctor am I if I still act like a child?” 

Robby couldn’t take much more of what you were saying. Each sentence you said in a way that you truly believed it about yourself had his chest tightening to where he was scared that he’d start crying too. He pursed his lips, and in one beat, he brought you into a hug. He held your head against his shoulder while his other arm tightened across your upper back. 

“A damn excellent doctor,” he answered your insecurity-filled question. “I’m sad to think that you believe everything your dad said, because you’re the total opposite. You come into work with a smile every morning no matter how bad the night before was. You make sure to not just hear patients but listen to their issues before giving them the most excellent healthcare plans. You don’t stumble during traumas; you don’t second guess; and you’re always looking to learn.” Robby paused. “Did you know that right now you currently have the highest patient-satisfaction score in the whole ED?” 

You shook your head against him with a bashful smile. 

He pulled away slightly but kept you between his arms. His eyes were red and irritated, probably from trying not to cry, but they were swimming with pride. 

“What he just said was absolute deflection. He knows he’s full of shit, but instead of manning up and dealing with himself, he lashes out and puts it all on you when you’re the furthest thing from it all.” He bent down just a bit to meet your height. “And I’m so fucking proud of you. You’re out here living through a really bad low, but you’re also here showing that nothing is going to stop you from working hard at doing what you love.” 

You sniffed loudly. “Thanks, Dr. Robby.” 

“We’re all here for you,” he added on. “Dana, Jack, Lena, Trinity, me, hell, I’m pretty sure any of your regular patients would take you in without a second thought. And you know what that tells me?” 

“What?” 

“That he had the perfect daughter and instead of raising her up like dads are supposed to, he decided to tell her she that wasn’t good enough when everyone else believes that she’s actually more than good enough, that they’d be honored to have as their own kid.” 

You stood there in silent awe before going right back into Robby’s arms with enough force that he gave out a small oomph. He didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around you again, willing to hold you close until you were ready to let go. 

After a bit, Robby wondered if you had fallen asleep standing up. Lord knows how tired you must have been after pulling a double and going through an emotional rollercoaster when you should have been in bed. 

“Were you serious about the espresso machine?” you suddenly asked, voice quiet and hesitant. 

You felt the way Robby’s chest fluttered under his laughter. 

“It was delivered about two hours ago. Got the notification when I was elbows deep in someone’s chest cavity.” 

You shuffled your weight between your feet. “If the room is still open then . . .” 

“It is,” he said, maybe a bit too quickly, but you didn’t seem to have a problem with his eagerness. 

“Then I guess I’ll take it,” you decided on. “If not for myself then for my back, because those beds . . .” you trailed off. 

Robby’s head tilted back as he laughed. “And you give me a hard time about mine!” 

You pulled away fully. “Yeah, because your back speaks your age. Mine’s already fifty-seven, and my frontal lobe hasn’t even fully developed.” You walked over to the door and rested your hand on the handle. “I’ll go get my stuff, then we’ll go home and watch episode six?” 

Home you’d said without even realizing. If Robby had anymore tears left, he’d be crying them already. 

He nodded once. “Yeah, kid. We’ll go home.” 

The ambulance bay doors slid open, and the Pitt was sent straight into its rolling pandemonium. 

“Thirty-eight-year-old male, crush injuring from scaffolding collapse,” the EMS rattled off while the gurney burst through the room in a storm of motion and noise. “Hypotensive enroute, decreased breath sounds left side, pelvic instability suspected—” 

“Trauma one is open,” Dana announced, gray eyes looking at the patient over her glasses. 

You slid automatically into position before anyone could call for a resident, already taking a place next to Robby before he even had to ask. Months ago, maybe even a year ago, you would’ve hovered at the edge of the bed waiting for instruction, careful not to take up too much space around the other residents and attending who carried significantly more years of experience in their pinkies than you possessed in your entire body. Now, however, after being thrown to the Pitt’s biting jaws through the worst of the worst, you moved with the flow of the room that felt like it had been stitched into your body. You planned in a way that screamed you were thinking one step ahead of the rest, even while they were doing the same. You stepped around Robby without colliding with him because you’d learned his habits so well you could almost taste where he’d turned before he did. 

The patient cried out as they transferred him over in a wet, frightening sound that should have made your stomach twist if you were in any other career choice. Blood soaked through the side of his neon yellow work vest in slow spreading layers. 

Robby’s voice cut through the room cleaning. “Chest rise diminished on the left. Collins-0” 

“Not Collins,” Frank corrected from across the bed without looking up from where he was already cutting through clothing. “Some of us do need a break from your foreboding ambiance.” 

Robby elected to ignore him completely. “BP?” 

“Ninety over sixty and falling,” Princess answered. 

You reached for the ultrasound before Robby even had to ask, earning you a raise of his eyebrows and a slight, almost humorous widening of his brown eyes. He had noticed but said nothing as he took the probe from your hand. 

There was a reason people called him terrifying. Nothing, and you truly meant nothing, escaped him, not in medicine and scarily not in people. You’d once watched him identify a pulmonary embolism from the way a patient shifted uncomfortably in bed before labs even came back, and later that same week he’d pulled you aside after a grueling shift because you’d been quieter than usual and asked if you were sleeping enough. The man observed everything with the same relentless intensity that made the residents’ skin crawl just by being in the same area as him. 

“FAST,” he ordered. 

Already doing it, you thought, but years of self-preservation kept the comment behind your teeth. 

Gel on skin. Probe down. 

Your eyes tracked the monitor quickly, mind sorting through anatomy and shadowing and fluid collections fast enough that the room almost blurred out around you. Your heart skipped a beat when the screen finally showed you what you needed. 

“There,” you said, holding the probe down in one spot. “Morison’s pouch.” 

Robby leaned slightly closer, one hand braced against the bed rail beside you while he looked at the screen. You could feel the heat rolling off him through the sleeve of your scrub top, sharp citrus soap and stale coffee sitting familiar in your lungs. 

“Yeah,” he said after half a second. “Good.” 

Simple word for a complex man, and yet, it was enough to send warmth through your chest. 

Frank looked over from the other side of the bed and sighed dramatically. “You know, some of us had to really work for validation around here.” 

“You still do,” Princess hummed, eyes trained on the monitors around her. 

“That’s hurtful.” 

“It’s accurate.” 

The patient started crashing before Frank could keep complaining. Blood pressure dipped again. Heart rate raced sporadically. One of the other nurses cursed under her breath as another IV line blew. 

“We’re going to need a chest tube,” Robby muttered, hands raised as he waited.

You moved toward the instrument tray almost absentmindedly, hands reorganizing clamps and tubing while the nurse beside you struggled to tear the packaging open with slippery gloves. By the time Robby looked back down, everything sat in place exactly where he preferred. His eyes shifted back over to you again. 

A delighted feeling cruised through your veins when recognition flashed in his eyes. Many of the residents, med students, and even nurses loudly prayed for at least a smidge of Robby’s praise to be sent their way. You somehow got it on a daily basis. 

Nothing made your body sing more like his subtle acknowledgement of him knowing that you were so familiar with his methods that you’d started anticipating them before he voiced them aloud. It really shouldn’t have mattered to you as much as it did, but your entire residency had slowly rearranged itself around moments exactly like that. 

Mix in a few daddy issues, and you’d really dug a hole for yourself that you didn’t really want to climb out of. 

“Scalpel.”

You placed it into his waiting hand before the finally syllable fully left his mouth. 

Frank snorted quietly from across the bed. “That’s unsettling?” 

You narrowed your eyes. “What is?” 

“Your synchronized trauma routine.” He looked between the two of you once before grimacing theatrically. “You know you do the same thing with your eyebrows now.” 

Your nostril curled ever so slightly. “I do not.” 

“You do,” he insisted. “You make that little judgement face Robby makes when somebody says something stupid.” 

Robby didn’t even glance up from the procedure. “Most things people say are stupid.”

“That,” Frank pointed. “Exactly that. She did it to a med student yesterday.” 

Heat crawled up your neck. “The kid tried to convince me that appendicitis presents in the left lower quadrant. What else was I supposed to do? Shake his hand and say congrats, you’re an idiot?” 

Frank considered this was a pause. “Okay, yeah, you made the right choice.” 

Princess laughed under her breath while adjusting pressure against the patient’s abdomen. “It’s honestly getting creepy at this point. They’re now starting to do the same posture too.” 

You shifted your weight, mouth open and ready to argue, but Robby spoke first.  

“She’s more tolerable than I am.” 

Frank’s eyebrows lifted slowly before he looked at you with exaggerated pity. “He likes you. I hope you know that.” 

Robby slid the chest tube into practiced precision. “Don’t make it weird, Langdon.” 

“Too late. You take one intern under your wing, and now she follows you around like a very stressed duckling.” 

“You’re just pissy Johnson didn’t do the same with you,” you shot back before looking back down to the patient. “Can we focus on the actively dying man, please, and not my flock tendencies?” 

“We are,” Frank said. “I can multitask.” 

Robby finally glanced up then, dry exhaustion written into every line and wrinkle of his face. “Somehow you became more irritating after marriage.” 

“Stability gave me confidence.” 

“Unfortunately.”

You bit back a smile as the room settled into a more controlled movement as the man’s blood pressure stabilized, his oxygen stats improved, and you could hear Garcia’s footsteps approaching for a surgery consult. The familiar rush of successful intervention loosened the tension slowly from your shoulders. 

You reveled in this part. 

Not the patient’s suffering, but the moment everything became more manageable again, the feeling of grabbing someone out of freefall with your bare hands and refusing to let go. You understood (maybe too well) why Robby had built his entire life around this feeling. It left you breathless like getting off a rollercoaster. 

The patient was finally wheeled toward surgery a few moments later, leaving Trauma room one to sit in a strange aftermath that always felt louder than the trauma itself. Bloody gauze littered the floor. Someone peeled gloves off with a tired curse. Princess disappeared toward another room without ceremony. 

You were wiping ultrasound gel off your forearm when Robby suddenly held out a chart toward you with no explanation. Your hand reached out and grabbed it, eyes already running over it with extreme precision. 

“Walk me through the bleed,” he said, always the teacher. 

Around you, a couple younger residents slowed subtly, pretending not to listen while absolutely listening. They wanted to know if Robby’s protégé was as accurate as some people made you out to be. 

You scanned the chart once more before answering. “Abdominal guarding worsened before the pressure drop. Bruising pattern suggested deeper impact than soft tissue trauma, and he stopped tracking conversation midway through transport.” 

“Earlier.”

You frowned. “What.” 

He gave you a look. “Earlier before transport. What’d you notice?” 

Your brain rewound for half a breath. “Oh. The shoulder tension.” You looked bac up at him. “He was compensating before the vitals shifted.” 

Robby nodded once. “Good.” 

Fank leaned against the nurses’ station nearby, arms crossed and chest inflated. His eyes flickered over to Robby. “You know what’s upsetting? She answers questions exactly the same way you do now.” 

You groaned softly, letting the chart swing down by your thigh. “Can everyone stop psychoanalyzing me during shift?” 

“No. It’s enriching my work environment.” He grinned wickedly, pointing between you and Robby. “She even does the pause thing. You ask a question and suddenly you stare into middle distance like you’re consulting ancient prophecies.” 

Robby scrubbed a hand over his forehead tiredly. “Langdon.” 

“I’m just saying—” The raven-haired resident held up two arms in mock surrender. “If she starts emotionally neglecting interns we may need a divine intervention.” 

You deadpanned. “You of all people shouldn’t be talking about emotional neglect. You cried during Toy Story 3.” 

“The film was devasting.” 

“The toys all lived, and yet you sobbed. Your children didn’t even shed a tear.” 

“They have the emotional competence of a business man.”

Robby exhaled something dangerously close to a laugh before turning back toward you. “Did you eat today?” 

Frank breathed in a hissing sound. “Oh, you’re so cooked.” 

You shot him a quick glare before going for the most innocent, doe-like look that you hoped rivaled Samira’ eyes. “I had . . . a coffee.” 

Like a balloon, Robby’s expression deflated. “Coffee’s not food.” 

“It fills me up. Cream has protein, right?” 

“Somehow you’ve made that worse in one breath.” 

“Oh!” You suddenly remembered. “I had half a granola bar at like . . . ten.”

You’d think Robby would look more impressed by fish swimming the way it should than the way he was looking at you right in that moment. 

“What time is it now?” he shot back. 

You checked the clocked over his shoulder and instantly regretted it. “five-thirty.” 

Frank somehow winced audibly. “See, this is exactly what Robby does!” 

The glare he got in return from Robby was sharp enough that Dr. King in room five might not need a scalpel anymore if she reached up and grabbed the look instead. Thankfully, Frank Langdon new when he needed to step back, which was right now. His demeanor changed as he dropped his shoulders; you could practically hear the sarcasm sizzle out of his skin. 

“I’m gonna go check on post-op before Dana gives me another boogery kid because I didn’t discharge someone fast enough,” he said lightly, pushing away from the counter. Then, as he passed you, his voice lowered. “Eat something before you pass out and make him develop a feeling.”

“Frank,” Robby warned. 

“I’m leaving.” 

He disappeared down the hall still grinning to himself. 

You looked back toward Robby unconsciously mirroring the way Robby was also holding his face: pinched brows and the slightest pout on your lips. “He acts like we’re in a sitcom.” 

“He acts like gossip built his entire personality.” 

“That’s mean.” 

“Eh, it’s a little accurate.” 

You laughed softly, exhaustion pulling the sound lower than usual. 

Robby watched you for a second afterward, gaze lingering just enough to turn your attention suddenly self-conscious. You’d gotten used to his intensity over time, but there were still moments where being perceived by him felt alarmingly thorough, as though he could line up every bad habit and stress fracture inside you with one glance. 

“Does your knee hurt?” 

You blinked. “How’d you know that?” 

“You favor your right leg when your knee hurts. You’ve been shifting weight since the trauma so much you could sign up for a dance competition.” 

You gawked before clamping your mouth shut with a chomp. 

Because annoyingly enough, he was right. An old soccer injury had started throbbing three hours ago under your scrubs, but you’d ignored it so thoroughly you genuinely forgot it was visible to sway side to side. 

“You notice way too much.” 

He kind of eyed the whole department. “That’s my job.” 

“That can’t possibly be healthy for your eyes.” 

“No,” he agreed easily. “Probably not.” 

Something about his casual honestly caught you off guard enough that you studied him for a moment. Somewhere between the past three months, exhaustion had carved deeper into his face.  You’d started recognizing the signs while he started ignoring them. Quieter pauses, the headaches he pretended weren’t headaches, the way he pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose when charting got particularly brutal, the way he stopped existing after snapping at Gloria when she denied his request for the second time in a row. 

Most people saw Dr. Robinavitch as this immovable force that haunted the ER like a ghost in a mid-century house people romanticized on Zillow. 

You had started noticing his cracks because somewhere along the line, he’d stopped hiding them quite as carefully around you. 

“You should sit down for ten minutes,” you said before thinking better of it. 

One of his eyebrows lifted slowly. “. . . Did you try to assign your attending a break?” 

“You’ve been here since six.” 

“So have you.” 

You smirked. “Yeah, but I’m young. My joints still contain hope and can bend without WD-40.” 

His head nodded side to side slightly as he took in the quip. “You’re getting mouthier.”

“You accepted my terms and conditions when you personally walked me through that intraosseous access ten minutes into my first shift.” 

“A mistake I continue to regret every night before bed.” 

“You say that, but you keep answering my pages.” 

“Hm.” 

You fell into step beside him as he started down the hallway toward the physician workroom, both of you moving slower now that the leftover trauma adrenaline had burned itself out. Around you the emergency department carried on in restless motion: phones ringing, stretchers squeaking against tile, distant questions dissolving into static. 

It struck you sometimes that the hospital had become its own kind of ecosystem for the two of you. Entire conversations carried out in passing glances across trauma bas. Shared coffees left untouched for hours. Long double shifts stitched together by dark humor and the unspoken understanding that both of you would stay longer than you should because leaving always felt harder than continuing.

“You know Frank’s right,” you said eventually. 

“That’s the most concerning thing you’ve said all day.” 

“About the posture thing.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Yes, you do.” 

He sighed the sigh of a man deeply burdened by 24/7 nonsense. “You’re all incredibly dramatic. Is that a class they recently added in med school?” 

“We literally huffed at the same time this morning while simultaneously crossing our arms.” 

“That sounds more like a you problem.” 

“It’s absolutely your fault.” 

He side-eyed you. “You’re an adult. Legally your own responsibility.” 

By the time you reached the workroom, the tension had dissolved almost entirely into familiar ease. You dropped into the chair beside his desk while he logged back into the computer with visible reluctance, shoulder sight beneath his navy scrubs and matching jacket you knew he owned three identical ones. 

Without looking away from the screen, he slid a protein bar across the desk toward you. Much to your surprise (and delight), it was one of those IQ bars that were definitely too expensive for you to purchase on whim. 

And it was the peanut butter one with chocolate chips. 

Your favorite.  

You stared at it and then at him. “You carry emergency protein bars for your residents now?” 

“You forget meals with alarming consistency.” 

His answer came matter-of-factly, as though that explained everything. Maybe to him it did, but to you, it lodged something warm painfully deep behind your ribs before you could even say thank you. 

With a playful huff that said I’m going to eat this but not because you told me to, you reached forward and dragged it off his desk. Your fingers peeled the wrapper open quietly while he reviewed labs in silence in front of you, the room settling while the first burst of salty peanut butter hit your tongue. His typing was the only thing that droned on in the otherwise silent room, but you didn’t mind. 

Because between that fateful intraosseous access and huffing at the same time after a patient said something incredibly stupid, you and Robby had found a way to sit in the quiet that no longer required effort to enjoy. 

_______________________

By the final hour of Robby’s last shift before his sabbatical, the ER settled into a particular kind of weariness that made everyone meaner. 

Monitors continued their endless chiming overhead, stretchers still rolled through ambulance bay doors every few minutes, nurses still moved at impossible speeds through overcrowded hallways, but the energy had shifted from morning urgency into something more frayed. Tempers shortened. Patience wore thin. Even the lights felt harsher this late into the shift, bleaching everyone pale in the wake of its glare. 

You stood at the central workstation with a chart balanced against your forearm while a med student stumbled through a patient presentation beside you. 

“. . . and since the pain radiates downward, we thought maybe pyelonephritis—” 

“It’s gallstones,” you interrupted without looking up from the chart. 

The student blinked. “But the flank pain—” 

“Referred.” You flipped the page. “Positive Murphy’s sign, elevated bilirubin, pain onset after eating. If you anchor location before symptom progression, you’ll miss obvious pathology.” 

The student stayed quiet, biting down on their bottom lip to keep from either speaking or crying. You couldn’t tell. A year ago, guilt would’ve hit immediately. But now, all you felt was a pure tiredness that only made you snappier. The student finally nodded and scribbled something down before retreating toward their patient’s room. 

Behind you, Frank let out a low whistle. “Jeez,” he muttered around his coffee cup. “That one even sounded like Robby.” 

Despite his teasing, you didn’t smile, didn’t roll your eyes, didn’t answer at all. The absence of a usual reaction sat strangely in the air as Frank’s smirk melted away. He leaned back in his chair, gaze flickering toward the opposite side of the department where Robby stood speaking with Dana near trauma three. Even from there, he could recognize the rigid set of his shoulders, the fatigue carved deep into his posture after weeks of increasingly brutal shifts and mounting administrative pressure surrounding his upcoming sabbatical.  

Two months ago, he would’ve glanced toward you by instinct at least once during your conversation and evaluation with the intern. Now, Robby barely looked at you unless you were two feet away from him speaking directly about a case. 

You hated how much you noticed despite the distance. 

“Okay,” Frank drew out carefully after a second, “I’m officially banning everyone from saying that sentence for the next twenty-four hours.” 

You kept scanning labs. “Saying what sentence.” 

“You know which one.” 

You placed the one chart down and picked up another harder than necessary. “People can say whatever they want.” 

“Hm,” carried entirely too much skepticism, which you ignored entirely. 

Across the room, Robby finally broke from Dana and started toward the workstation. Your body reacted before your brain caught up by your spine straightening slightly, your attention sharpening, your pulse kicking once beneath your sternum in the humiliating reflex of someone still waiting for approval you no longer received. The betrayal of it all made you angry every single time. 

He stopped beside you without preamble, holding out a tablet. “Room’s twelve repeat troponin came back elevated.” 

You took the tablet with a cocked eyebrow and lips halfway in a sneer. “I already paged cardio.” 

“Not the issue.” 

Your jaw tightened almost imperceptibly with that relentless distance he’d started using on you over the past few months, every interaction stripped down to correction and instruction and professional detachment sharp enough to cut you open if you even looked at him wrong. 

You grazed the chart quickly. “His pain worsened after the repeat EKG.” 

“You didn’t document that.” 

“I was about to.” 

“You should’ve already,” he spat before pursing his lips like he hadn’t meant for the words to slip out so violently. 

To your side, Frank glanced very deliberately at his own computer screen. 

You swallowed thickly, saliva and pride gliding down into your belly. “The consult was more important.”  

Robby huffed. “How many times have I told you that documentation matters.” 

“I know.” 

“Then act like it.” 

A heated feeling flared in your chest at his insistence. He’d corrected you so many times before, the feeling shouldn’t have risen and burned, but he never used to correct you like that: without context, without conversation, without a lick of dry humor to soften the blows of his teachings. Every conversation since his sabbatical had been announced felt cleanly impersonal, as though he was sanding the relationship down on purpose until there was nothing left except chief attending and learning resident. 

You handed the tablet back with more oomph than necessary. “I’ll fix the note.” 

“Good.” 

The wall was so high and incredibly thick that you wondered if anyone else could see it or if you were the only one still stupid enough to keep running into it headfirst. 

Robby turned slightly towards a med student lingering nearby. “Walk with me.” 

The student nearly jumped to attention. 

You stared down at the chart in your hands hard enough the words started blurring together. Months ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to ask you to join him at his side. Instead, he handed cases to other residents whenever possible, redirected questions, stopped sitting beside you during charting, stopped checking whether you’d eaten, stopped falling into those easy exhausted conversations s at 2 a.m. that used to make 24-hour shifts feel survivable. 

When he stared doing it all, you convinced yourself that he was just busy. Then you moved on to him being tired and then stress before all you had left was the ugly realization that he was pulling away carefully enough to make his actions look unintentional. 

Which somehow hurt worse than if he’d looked you in your face and said, “Because I’m leaving, I’m going to stop treating you like someone that matters to me and more like just another one of my residents.” 

Frank watched Robby disappear down the hallway before looking back toward you. 

“You know,” he said slowly, “for two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, you’re both handling this incredibly badly.” 

You kept your eyes down, almost willing for the chart to blow up under your gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Sure you do.” 

“I’m trying to chart.” 

“And you’re glaring at the chart hard enough to intimidate the lab results.” 

You exhaled sharply through your nose. 

“He’s scared.” Frank’s voice had softened, matching the way his eyes looked at you like he’d look at a stepped-on flower. With pity. 

“Of what?” flew out of your mouth before you could trap it behind your teeth. 

He paused; his hesitation made your stomach twist, because you’d never seen Frank Langdon hesitate as long as you’d been working at the Pitt. 

He finally spoke one word: “You.” 

A laugh turned scoff pushed through your lungs. “That’s ridiculous.” 

“Is it?” 

“Yes.” 

Frank studied you a moment longer. “You know when everyone says that ‘you look just like him’ they mean it as a compliment, right?” 

Something ugly curled low in your chest. “Yeah,” you whispered. “I know.” 

Lately, the comparison sounded different than admiration. It sounded more like preparation for something that hadn’t happened yet. The department already talked about you stepping up to take on more responsibility after Robby left for sabbatical. Your fellow residents who had equal footing had started looping you into discussions they used to have with him. Nurses sough you out first during trauma overflow. Med students watched you during difficult cases with the same wary attention they watched him. 

Every time someone laughed and called you “Baby Robinavitch” or joked that the ED had cloned its favorite workaholic, all you heard were just reminders that Robby was leaving, and you hated yourself for thinking it, hated him more for making the thought possible. 

The overhead pager crackled suddenly before another ambulance alert rang through the department signaling an incoming trauma. Around you, the ER shifted gears like a character from a Fast and Furious movie. 

Frank stood with a groan, tossing his empty coffee cup toward the trash. “Excellent. Maybe getting screamed at by surgeons will heal the emotional devastation around here.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Doubtful.” 

“Worth a shot.” 

You followed him toward the trauma bay automatically, pulling gloves on while nurses rushed around preparing equipment. Robby was already standing near the ambulance doors, crossed arms resting against his chest. He didn’t look at you when you took your usual position beside him. 

The paramedics burst through moments later with a teenager strapped to a backboard, blood matted through dark curls near her temple. 

“Seventeen-year-old female, restrained passenger in MVA, brief LOC at scene—” 

The next twenty minutes swallowed everything else whole. At least through Robby’s season of confused and surprised emotional warfare, medicine still made sense. Movement, priorities, protocols: you slipped seamlessly into their rhythm beside Robby despite everything that unraveled outside the trauma bay. You still handed instruments over before he asked, still anticipated orders, still caught a subtle pressure drop before monitors reflected it. 

At one point, your hand brushed his wrist while passing gauze. Once upon a time, he would’ve made some dry comment about personal space or quip something about Do I need to hold your hand while you cross the street next? Now, he only stepped back slightly in a tiny movement that felt enormous. 

By the time the patient stabilized enough for CT transport, sweat clung damp against the back of your neck, and your knee throbbed beneath your scrub pants. The room smelled sharply of saline and iron and overheated machinery while nurses weaved around on another in a practiced dance as the last of the bloody gauze disappeared into red biohazard bins. 

Dana stripped off her gloves first. “Nice catch on the pressure change.” 

You nodded absently, already reaching for the chart. 

Almost like instinct, Frank pointed between you and Robby while reaching for fresh gloves. “See? Same brain. It’s disturbing.” 

His comment landed differently than it used to. You felt the impact like a bruise that got pressed on too hard. Dana noticed the way your face pinched briefly. Frank did too, judging by the way his mouth shut halfway through his next sentence. 

You knew you should have kept yours in your mouth, but the back and forth had your lips loosening. So, in hurt and emotionally drained fashion, you let your next statement fly. 

“At least one of ours is working properly.” 

Robby, despite every push back, finally looked at you. Really looked. And for one awful second, you though he understood exactly why it all hurt now. Why that every time someone said you were becoming him, or did something he did, or even claim you were morphing into his spitting image, all you could think about was how everybody spoke about his sabbatical with careful, rehearsed optimism. 

A few months away. 

He needs the rest. 

It’ll be good for him. 

Nobody said the possibility that he might leave the hospital and simply not come back out loud. But you heard it clear as day anyway. You heard it in the gentleness people used around him lately, in the way Dana watched him when he looked particularly exhausted, in the way residents had already started shifting responsibility toward you before he’d even gone. 

They tiptoed around the possibility like they were already cushioning the impact in advance. Preparing the department slowly enough that nobody panicked. Replacing him piece by piece while he still technically belonged to the hospital for 35 more minutes. 

You realized too late that the room had gone quiet around you the same way a theater quieted before the conductor started the show. 

Robby’s gaze narrowed slightly down at you. “What?” 

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing.” 

“Sorry,” you stated flatly. “Did you want me to document my emotional response too?” 

Frank closed his eyes briefly; Dana muttered something like Good Lord under her breath; Robby went very still. 

“You’re overtired,” he said evenly. 

The lack of an exploding response snapped something inside you hard enough to make your pulse ring. 

“That’s funny,” you answered before you could stop yourself. “I learned that from you.”

The room froze. Despite popular belief, no one gasped dramatically, the monitors didn’t stop screaming, and the ER kept moving around you the same way it always did, but inside the trauma bay, something tightened all at once, thin and dangerous as a piano wire. 

Robby’s eyes locked onto yours. “Excuse me?” 

“You heard me.” 

Dana took a slow step backward while Frank looked like a man witnessing a controlled detonation. 

Robby’s voice stayed low and borderline cold as he spoke your name in a warning. “This isn’t the place.” 

You laughed softly with a brittle edge. “Right. God forbit anybody notices there’s a problem.” 

“There isn’t a problem.” 

Weeks—months—of him pulling away from you one careful inch at a time, and he still wanted to pretend none of it existed, pretend none of it scooped out your insides on painful spoonful at a time. You stared at him, suddenly furious enough to shake. 

“Seriously?” you asked. “You stopped speaking to me unless it’s to criticize something. You hand my cases to other residents. You act like I’m inconveniencing you by standing in the same room, and now there’s suddenly no problem?” 

Your voice rose pitches at least three times in those statements as you slowly were losing control on how you said things. 

Robby pursed his lips once. “This is exactly what I mean,” he snapped. “You’re exhausted, you’re reactive, and you’re taking everything personally.” 

“Because you—” Your finger jutted out and pointed right at his chest. “—made it personal!” 

His jaw tightened below his beard. “Lower your voice.” 

“No,” cracked out instantly. 

Around you, nursed had started finding reasons to leave the bay. 

Smart people.

“You don’t get to do this, Robby,” you continued, chest heaving now with something dangerously close to panic beneath your anger. "You don't get to spend years teaching me how to think and how to work and how to survive this place and then suddenly decide I’m too much of a problem to deal with.” 

Robby glanced briefly toward the hallway before looking back at you. “You’re not a problem.” 

“Then stop acting like you think I’m one before high tailing it out of here without a second thought!” 

And there it was in all its twisted and emotionally stunted glory: the real thing. 

Not the charting. Not the criticism. Not the endless cutting distance between you. 

That ugly truth that no one was brave enough to say out loud. 

Robby’s entire expression changed at once, exhaustion surfacing visibly beneath his waning control. “This is not about my sabbatical.” 

“Yes, it is.” 

“It’s not,” he argued. 

“Then what is it about?” Your voice rose despite yourself. “Because everybody else in this entire fucking department already acts like I’m supposed to replace you when you’re gone, and apparently you do too.” 

He shook his head, eyes closing briefly. “That’s not what’s happening.”

“Really?” You took a step closer. “Because every time someone says I remind them of you or that I look like you or that I act like you, you look at me like I’ve done something wrong.” 

His face gave you nothing, wordless confirming it all, making the hurt twist sharper inside your chest. 

One single tear, with its own sheer will, slid down your cheek after you closed your eyes for half a second to breathe, a second for the room’s energy to lessen to a point that could be more manageable for everyone. 

“You know what the worst part is?” you asked quietly. “I used to love hearing that.” Your tongue peaked out and wetted your lips. “You are the best doctor here. You care about people. You take the time to teach everyone no matter the circumstance. You made this place survivable, because if Dr. Robby could make it through then so could I.” You swallowed hard. “And now you can barely look at me.” 

Robby paused for a moment before saying, “That’s not true.” 

“Then look at me and tell me you’re coming back.”

For the first time since the argument started, Robby looked genuinely caught off guard as your demand landed between you and him with terrifying weight. He hesitated, and you took it right to the heart. 

Your laugh came out in a shaky breath, closer to grief than humor. “Wow.” You blinked away the rest of the tears rapidly, hands coming to rest on your hips. 

He said your name with such earnest you almost believed he wanted to make amends before “That’s not fair,” followed. 

“No,” you replied, voice breaking harder now despite your best efforts. “What’s not fair is turning me into your pet project for three years and then deciding you’re done with me before you even leave.” 

His eyes hardened. “That is not what this is, and you know it.” 

“But I don’t. I don’t know what this is,” you told him. “Because from where I’m standing, it really looks like you’re trying to make leaving easier on yourself while the rest of us have to pick up your shit you left behind.” 

“That’s fucking enough.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

The exhaustion, the fear, the months of swallowing every ugly feeling until they curdled into resentment finally erupted all at once like a shaken bottle of Coke. 

“You know what?” you snapped. “Fine. Go.” 

You watched in real time as Robby froze. 

Your eyes burned with unblinked tears. “I’m serious. Take your three-month sabbatical. Leave us all behind wondering if you’ll ever step through the doors again.” You inhaled shakily, ready to give the final blow. “Maybe then we’ll finally realize the ER was better off without you anyways.”  

The second the words left your mouth, the room went dead silent. In its stillness, your anger vanished so quickly it left nausea behind. 

Frank stared at you in horror. 

Dana looked openly stricken. 

Robby . . . It broke something inside as he looked at you like you’d just hit him with a tiredness you’d never seen before. It transformed his whole face. And for one terrible second, you saw how shattered he really was beneath all the sharpness and control and impossible competence he projected daily. How worn thin he’d become. How much effort it probably took just to keep showing up every day while everyone around him quietly waited to see if he’d finally break. 

Guilt crashed into you so hard your hands started shaking, but pride kept your mouth shut. 

In the end, Robby looked away first, and when he finally spoke, his voice had gone very quiet as he said your name. “Go home.” 

You swallowed the creeping bile down. “Robby—” 

“Go home,” he repeated, voice void of any anger, any hint of yelling, any edge of sharpness, just finality. 

Dana moved slightly as though she wanted to intervene, but Frank caught her wrist subtly before she could. 

The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly, Somewhere down the hall, somebody laughed at something entirely related. A monitor alarm started beeping almost immediately afterward. The ER kept moving; hospitals never paused long enough for personal disasters. 

You stared at Robby for another second, desperate suddenly for him to say something else, yell back, be angry, give you something to fight against besides that awful, exhausted distance settled back over his expression. But he only stepped around you and walked out of the trauma bay without another word. 

And somehow that felt exactly like being left behind before he actual left. 

_______________________

In the dying embers of the argument, the ER had mostly settled by the time the nightshift started filtering in during handoff. That frantic point of day shift dulled as nurses traded clipped updates at central stations while exhausted residents disappeared toward lockers or call rooms with the hollow-eyes look of people whose brains had stopped processing new information two hours ago. Pages still crackled through the halls, monitors still beeped intermittently from patient rooms, gurneys still traveled through ambulance doors under the forever buzzing lights, but the melody of it all shifted into a different key. 

Robby sat alone at the nurses’ station staring at a chart he hadn’t actually read in the last five minutes with the argument replaying over and over again in shifts and flashes. 

Maybe then we’ll finally realize the ER was better off without you anyways. 

The words should have made him angry. Instead, they pounded against his ribs like he’d earned each kick. He harshly dragged a hand over his face slowly enough that his skin lagged behind the motion before snapping back with probably another wrinkle added. Everything around him blurred together in disconnected pieces. Dana argued with transport near triage, a nurse laughed tiredly somewhere down the hall, a supply drawer slammed shut with a distant metallic clang. 

He knew he should have gone home already, should have already been on the road with his motorcycle rumbling between his legs down the highway. Yet, he kept finding reasons to stay. One more chart, one more patient review, one more handoff clarification. He wondered if leaning now would somehow solidify what had happened in trauma two. 

“You look terrible, brother.” 

Jack Abbot dropped into the chair beside him holding two coffees (Robby noted that they were from the cafeteria), one immediately shoved toward Robby without ceremony. 

Robby accepted it but set it down quickly right after. “You say that every handoff.” 

“Because every shift you look terrible.” Jack leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs out with a groan that should have rumbled the table. “Age comes for us all.” 

“You’re younger than me by four years.” 

“And spiritually eighty-seven.” 

Robby took a sip of coffee that tasted burnt enough to strip paint before finally looking toward his friend. Jack, despite already being there since the cyber-attack, had already changed into his night shift mode: more awake now, energy settling into place as the rest of the department started fading.

Jack’s gaze flickered once around the workstation before settling back on Robby. “Where’s your mini-me?” 

Robby’s jaw clicked before he could stop it, something that Jack picked up on almost immediately. 

“Oh no.” 

“She went home.” 

“That sentence alone sounded emotional catastrophic.” 

Robby looked back at the screen. “We argued.” 

A low whistle sung through Jack’s lips. “That bad?” 

For a moment, Robby didn’t reply. Around them, the sounds of the ER swelled and receded in restless waves, mirroring what Robby was feeling on the inside. A part of him wanted to run after you, the other wanted to stand its ground after what he said. 

Jack sighed quietly. “What happened?” 

Normally, Robby would have brushed the question off, but the day had worn him thin enough that the words came easier than they should’ve. 

“She’s been increasingly reactive for weeks,” he stated like he was reading off a patient’s symptoms. “Combative. Defensive. Every conversation either ends in an argument, or I get the silent treatment for the rest of the shift.” 

Jack listened without interrupting. 

“I’ve been trying to give her space before I leave,” Robby continued, eyes fixed somewhere past the computer screen now. “She’s too attached to this place already. To me.” 

His admission tasted sour out loud. 

Jack nodded along. “And today?”

Robby exhaled slowly through his nose. “Langdon made another joke about us being the same.” His eyebrows pinched as that part of the memory flashed over his eyes. “She snapped.” 

Jack’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “What kind of snapped?” 

“She accused me of pushing her away.” 

“Are you?” Jack leaned back farther in his chair, studying him now with the same calm attention he usually reserved for difficult patients. “Oh,” he said after Robby failed to answer. “You really screwed this up, brother.” 

Robby finally looked at him, neck snapping at a speed Jack should have been concerned for dislocation. “Excuse me?” 

“You heard me.” 

“She told me the ER would be better off without me.” 

“And you think that happened in a vacuum?” 

Irritation flared through Robby’s stomach. “Jack.” 

“No seriously.” Jack gestured toward him with his coffee cup. “What exactly did you think was going to happen here? That she’d send you off with a card and a Good Luck after treating her like that for the past few months?” 

“I was trying to make this easier on her, on everyone.” 

Jack stared at him for one long moment before a disbelieving laugh barked out of him. 

“You really don’t hear how you sound,” he muttered. His hazel eyes locked onto Robby’s brown ones. “She thinks you’re disappearing.” 

Robby’s lips tugged into a deep frown, smile lines pointing the wrong way. “I told everyone it’s temporary.” 

“Yeah,” Jack huffed. “And everybody talks about it like you’re dying.” 

And somehow, Robby never thought of it like that. The realization felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water down his scrubs in the way he froze under it all. 

Jack sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Come on, Robby. Look around lately. Dana watches you like she’s waiting for you to collapse. Langdon keeps making jokes because nobody knows how else to handle the fact that you’ve worked yourself half to death for years already.” His sharp features soften somehow like it’d lessen the blow. “And meanwhile she’s listening to everybody compare her to you while you slowly start handing pieces of your job over.” 

Robby said nothing, because for the first time in months, he could see it how you saw it. Every joke about your similarities, every conversation about responsibility after his sabbatical, every careful smile people flashed his way lately, every time he’d pulled away desperate to make the separation cleaner safer. 

He truly believed he’d been protecting you from becoming too dependent on him all while convincing you that he was preparing everyone for his absence—a permanent sounding absence. 

Something must have inched across his face because Jack nodded once. 

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Now you see it.” 

Robby’s back hit the chair in a silent protest, exhaustion suddenly feeling bone-deep while your words rang in his ears but this time from your perspective. 

Then look at me and tell me you’re coming back. 

You hadn’t said that in anger, but rather a deep and genuine fear that must have been festering since . . . well, his elaborate plan to make “space” started happening. Your type of fear wasn’t that he was leaving the hospital for a few months, it was that you believed one day he would simply stop existing in the shape the Pitt had built around him. 

The same way Adamson had back in 2021. Not by abandonment but just gone, just someplace where no one living could ever reach him. The idea that you believed that hollowed out everything in his chest, leaving behind just an empty old heart. 

“She said the ER was better off without me,” he finally ended with, voice cracking the way your heart probably did every time he pushed you away. 

Jack’s lips curled into a thin line. “Yeah. And I’m guessing she looked about ready to cry when she said it.” 

Robby looked down at the coffee and stared blankly at the small bubbles. “She already was.” 

“Then congrats, brother,” Jack chuckled lowly. “You’ve officially hit the point where the kid starts saying horrible things because she thinks she’s losing you and doesn’t know how to fix it to where you come back.” 

The word kid should not have affected him as much as it did. Robby was past the golden dreams of fatherhood the minute he bought the motorcycle during his so-called mid-life crisis. Yet, at some point, somewhere between overnight trauma shifts and cafeteria coffees and years of teaching you how to survive emergency medicine, he had stopped thinking of you as just another intern a long time ago. 

And apparently you had stopped thinking of him as just another attending a long time ago too. 

He closed his eyes, letting everything sink in down to his bones. “I need to find her.” 

“Probably.”

He stood too quickly, chair scraping harshly against the tile, vision going a bit fuzzy from the change in bodily direction. 

Jack eyed him carefully before asking, “You are coming back, right?” 

Robby just glared sharply. 

Jack held up a hand in defense. “I know. Stupid question.” He licked his lips. “But maybe say it out loud to her anyway.” 

His advice thundered in Robby’s chest because no one had ever said something like that to him. Not during COVID, not after his mentor passed, not when the grief hollowed the entire department out for weeks after Pittfest when everyone kept working because there wasn’t anything else to do. 

Nobody had sat him down, looked him in the eye, and said: I’m not leaving too. 

Just before Robby could answer, Dana appeared from down a hallway with a chart against her hip. “You’re still here?” she asked, eyes narrowing when she took them both in. “Why do you two look like someone died.” 

“We’re working on preventing an emotional catastrophe,” Jack answered. 

Dana sighed. “Ah. So business as usual.” 

Robby grabbed his zip-up jacket from the back of his chair. “Have you seen her?” 

Dana’s pointed features softened instantly. “Yeah,” she said. “Thought she went home at first, but Langdon found her about twenty minutes ago.” 

“Where?” he asked with a zealous to make things right before he lost one of the best things that’d ever happened to him. 

Dana tilted her head toward the hallway leading deeper into the department. “In your office.” 

_______________________

Robby’s office door stood half-open when he reached it with the inside light turned off. 

Only the dim spill from the hallway stretched across the floor in pale bands, cutting through the darkness just enough for him to make out the shape of you sitting against the far wall beside his desk. He frowned. You hadn’t chosen the chair, not even close to it, just choosing the floor with your knees pulled loosely toward your chest, one arm draped over them while the glow from a laptop screen reflected faintly across your face. His desk chair sat abandoned a few feet away, turning crooked as thought you’d shoved it rather than use it. 

You didn’t notice him standing there immediately. Your attention stayed fixed somewhere distant, eyes unfocused on the char opening in front of you. The exhaustion in your posture hit him harder than the yelling had. You looked wrung out, small despite the fact that he’d spent years watching you grow beautifully and more capable inside the hospital. 

He wanted to take a few more minutes, prepare for what he was going to say, but the floor just had to creak softly beneath his show. 

Your head jerked up at the sound with a guarded looking flashing across your face. When it clicked that Robby was the person in the doorway, you looked back down at the computer. 

“Thought you went home,” you mumbled like a child who didn’t get ice cream for dessert. 

Robby flicked the light on before closing the door fully with a soft click. “So did I.” 

A pout tugged at your lips. “Forgot to finish my charts.” 

“That’s a lie.” 

You huffed a tired breath through your nose. “Yeah,” you admitted tiredly. 

He stayed standing for another moment before finally crossing the office in slow, measured steps. You watched him approach this time, shoulders curling inward the closer he got, as though you expected another argument to start back up, another correction, another clean profession distance placed between the two of you with the most sterile goodbye he could manage. 

To your surprise, Robby lowered himself to the floor beside you with a quiet groan of tired joints. He was close enough that his shoulder pressed almost deliberately against yours, and the contact nearly undid you on the spot. 

The action was such a small thing, barely anything, but after months of him slowly stepping away every time you got too close, the solid warmth of him beside you felt almost unbearable and entirely unbelievable. 

You let out a shaky and wet exhale at the same time Robby’s was just pure fatigue. 

Your eyes strained at the floor between your shoes. “I didn’t mean it,” you finally confessed with closed eyes. “What I said before.” 

“I know.” 

You swallowed thickly around burning hot tears that welled too quickly in your eyes. “Still shouldn’t have said it.” 

“No,” he agreed. “You shouldn’t have.” 

His honestly almost made you laugh because that was the most Robby answer he could ever give you. He’d never lie just to make you feel better; that’s just not how the world worked. Beside you, his shoulder shifted more firmly against yours in a grounding and intentional choice. 

Your lips pressed hard enough that they started shaking. “I thought you hated me,” you admitted before you could stop the words from slipping through. 

The silence afterward felt too large for the small office. 

Robby turned toward you fully, eyebrows furrowed like he didn’t believe that at all. “What?” 

Your laugh cracked embarrassingly halfway through. “You stopped talking to me, started questioning everything I said while you let other residents call everything, wouldn’t look me in the eye unless you needed to.” Your throat tightened painfully. “I thought maybe you realized everyone was right, and I was turning into you too much and you just . . . didn’t want me around anymore.” 

“Honey.” 

The name shouldn’t have hit hard enough for tears to spill, but with one blink, a torrential downpour flooded down your cheeks. You covered your face quickly, humiliated by how fast you were suddenly crying, but Robby kept talking before you could apologize for it. 

“That is not what happened.” He shook his head to really send it home. 

“Then what was it?” you asked. “Because it really felt like you were getting ready to leave and making sure that I didn’t matter enough to miss you.” 

You felt the way his shoulder stiffened follow by the way he stopped shuffling. Taking a peek at his face, your chest twisted at the sight of devastation plastered clear as day in his features, in the way his own eyes seemed glassy. 

“Oh,” he breathed out, chest visibly deflating with the word. 

“I know it sounds stupid,” you whispered. “I know you said it’s temporary, I know everyone keeps saying it’s temporary, but—” Your voice broke hard enough you had to stop for a second. “Everybody talks about you like you’re planning to die.” 

Robby looked away sharply. 

A shuddering breath filled your lungs. “You’ve been exhausted for years. Dana watches you constantly. Frank keeps making jokes every time the word sabbatical gets thrown around because no one knows how else to act. Dennis is freaking out about watering your plants and is constantly wondering if he even gets to message you about them while you’re away. And they all keep talking about me taking over things while you’re gone and—” A hiccup cut you off. “And then you started pulling away.” 

The office fell silent except for the faint hum of the old air conditioner overhead. 

When Robby finally spoke again, his voice sounded rougher than usual. “I thought I was helping.” 

You wiped angrily under your eyes. “By pretending I didn’t exist.” 

“By making sure you’d be okay without me.” 

Each thing he said hurt you so badly that you couldn’t help but laugh through the tears at his stupidity. “That’s the problem. You sound like you’re dying.” 

For a second, neither of you moved. And then Robby, poor old man Robby with his complicated feelings, leaned forward suddenly, elbows braced against his knees while one hand covered part of his mouth hard enough you watched him drag in a slow breath through his fingers like a cigarette. 

"Oh, kid." 

The grief in his voice was the final straw, breaking everything open inside you completely. You bent forward before you could stop yourself, crying in earnest now; silent at first, shoulders shaking beneath scrubs that desperately needed a wash while months of fear and bubbling anger and hurt finally collapsed under their own weight. 

At the sound of your sobs, Robby turned toward you fully. “Hey,” he said gently. “Hey.” 

One of his hands rose and settled carefully against the back of your head. The other wrapped around your shoulder before he pulled you into him. The moment your forehead hit his shoulder, you broke. Your sobs weren’t anything graceful like the movies where the girl’s makeup stays perfect; they weren’t quiet like some people could manage; they were loud with waves of devastated tears soaking straight into the front of his scrub top while he held you with one arm tight around your back and the other cradling the back of your head protectively against him in the same way he held Baby Jane Doe hours earlier. 

“I’m s-sorry,” you choked out uselessly. 

“No.” He hushed you firmly. “None of that.” 

“I didn’t mean it, I swear—” 

“I know.” 

His hand moved slowly through your hair in long, grounding movements from the top of your skull to the base.

“You listen to me,” he said quietly into your hair before pulling back just enough to look at you. His eyes looked tired but achingly clear. “I am not dying.” 

You pulled in a gasping breath. 

“I’m not disappearing,” he continued. “I’m not going to vanish on you. I’m taking three months because Dana threatened bodily harm if I didn’t stop working eighty hours a week.” He cooed your name when a watery laugh escaped you. “There you are,” he murmured barely above a whisper. “Good.” 

You wiped uselessly at your face again. “You can’t blame me for thinking something was wrong.” 

“I know.” 

“You looked miserable every day.” 

“That’s because this place is terrible.” 

“You love this place.” 

“Horrible character flaw. Writers should have done better.” 

Another tiny, broken laugh escaped, but Robby’s face melted fully for the first time in months at the sound. Suddenly, like a door opening to another universe, you could see Robby again—the version of him you’d been missing so badly underneath the distance. Yes, he was still run through and emotionally constipated beyond belief but still him, still yours in the strange, complicated way mentorship sometimes became family before either person noticed. 

You sighed loudly. “You should’ve just told me.”

“I should’ve.” 

“You’re supposed to be the emotionally intelligent one.” 

Robby looked genuinely offended. “That has literally never been said about mel” 

You laughed harder through the remnants of tears, forehead dropping briefly against his shoulder again. He thankfully let you stay there, not rushing, not teasing to bring a heat to your cheeks, just keeping one hand stead at your back while the other rested warmly against your hair. 

After a while of catching up on lost moments, he spoke more quietly. “For the record, the ER would not be better off without me.” 

You groaned, nose practically smushed into his collarbone. “Fuck off.” 

“I’m just saying, objectively, moral would plummet, satisfaction scores would drop down to the floor.” 

“You’re unbelievable.” 

“Hm.” 

You stayed there before finally pulling back, eyes misty again as another question sat behind your teeth. “Are you really coming back?” 

“Yes.” There wasn’t any hesitation on his part. “Yes. I’m coming back.” 

Your chest ached with relief so sudden it almost felt painful. Robby was able to catch the way it made your whole body melt against his in real time. 

“And if you want,” he added slowly, “you could come up for a weekend.” 

You blinked. “What?” 

“The cabin.” 

“You’re inviting me to your creepy forest recovery era? Have you ever seen a horror movie?” 

“It’s a lake.” 

“Same concept. Serial killers don’t pass over doctors.” 

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You could get out of the hospital for forty-eight hours. Dana claims the fresh air prevents personality disorders.” 

“That feels medically inaccurate.” 

“Probably.”

“But Dana’s smarter than us combined.” You smiled, teeth poking through, eyes still red and swollen. 

Robby looked down at you, almost burning this version in his mind to remember what he almost made himself lose, before reaching over and brushing his thumb carefully under one eye, catching the last tear there with a gentleness so careful it nearly unraveled you all over again. 

“You know,” he added, “you don’t actually have to become me to be a good doctor.” 

You let the words sink into your system, ones that you’d been so wired to accept that they almost felt foreign coming from him. He wasn’t warning you this time but giving a gentle reassurance that, yes, you could do just fine without him. 

Even if you wanted to keep choosing to follow him for a long while. 

You leaned back against the wall beside him, shoulder once again pressing against his. “Good,” you muttered. “Because your coping mechanisms are terrible.” 

Robby barked a tired laugh beside you. “Yeah. Gotta work on that too.” 

For a long while after that, neither of you moved from the office floor. 

The Pitt continued around in muffled motion, but for the first time in months, the unnamed space between you and Robby no longer felt fragile enough to shatter under one wrong word. He stayed pressed against you, solid and familiar, and every so often his hand would tap absently against your arm like he was reassuring himself you were still there too. 

To say you were nervous for your first day at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center was an understatement. As you waited for your shift to start, you couldn’t stop rocking on your heels with your hands held behind your back, fingers twisting at your wedding ring, as you waited near the nurses’ station promptly at 6:55 am. 

The ED bustled around the small, eager and probably equally nervous group that you were a part of. To your left, a brunette woman and a blond man held similar poses while a raven-haired, dark-skinned girl took the place next to your right, looking almost too young to be there. The urge to introduce yourself to the other three was swiftly put on hold when a rather tall, sad-looking man, probably your new attending, Dr. Robby, approached while talking to what you would call already-veteran doctors. 

“Alright folks, listen up,” Robby announced before stopping. “As you can see, we have some new faces this morning. Starting with second-year resident Doctor Melissa King, fresh from the V.A.” 

The happy-looking blond woman next to him smiled and slightly waved her hands. “Everybody calls me Mel. I’m super happy to be here.” 

He nodded sat her before looking at your group. “And one new intern, three med students.”

You pursed your lips, waiting for him to start the introductions, but apparently it seemed like he had other ideas. He crossed his arms and continued to stare expectantly. 

“This is where you introduce yourselves.” 

Again, none of you spoke until the brunette to your left spoke up. “Trinity Santos. Intern.” 

The raven-haired girl went next. “Victoria Javadi, M.S. Three.” 

Then the blond. “Dennis Whitaker, M.S. Four.” 

And that left you to finish out the group, finger still spinning your ring with nervousness. “Y/n Cody. Also M.S. Four.” 

A redheaded woman with a fringe leaned over to a brunet male. “Would you look at that rock,” she whispered, but her voice carried enough that you were able to hear it. 

You bashfully put your hands behind your back again. It wasn’t like you weren’t proud to be married, but the unwanted attention had you shrinking into yourself. Thankfully though, their eyes shifted away from you when a bleach blond older woman joined the group. Robby gestured toward her. 

“For you new people, this is the most important person you’re going to meet today. Dana is our Charge Nurse; she is the ring linger of this circus. Do what she says, when she says it. Now, as you can see, the house is always packed.” 

Your eyes drifted from the attending to look around. However, because of the motion, you weren’t able to get a good look at the person who spoke next. 

“The ER is the gift that keeps on giving.” 

Robby’s voice filled your ears again. “Most of our department is clogged up with boarders. Those are the admitted patients waiting for a room upstairs, sometimes for days. Beds are a precious commodity, so be quick and efficient with your workups. Half of your cases will be discharged from chairs. And while we treat the sicker patients back here, keep an eye on the waiting room to be sure no one’s about to die out there.” He turned to Dana. “Ready to rock and roll?” 

Dana smiled. “To quote Wu-Tang, Bring the mother fuckin’ ruckus.” 

Robby turned to the residents, and you finally turned your eyes back to him. 

“Senior residents got sign outs?” he asked. 

Two of them—the brunet man and a dark-skinned woman—nodded, their hands both holding tablets. 

“Alright, let’s do this,” Robby said before turning away, already moving further into the department. 

He quickly began to integrate your group into their daily routine. First stop was an exhausted-looking mother holding an even louder and exhausted-sounding baby. You kept quiet while they worked, wanting to more take in everything instead of jumping the gun and calling the wrong diagnoses. After Dana walked away to get some Nair for the baby’s hair tourniquet, Robby continued on, each of you following him like a lost duckling. 

After the small moments of calm in the morning, the following hours ascended into madness. The first traumas had been a woman who’d been pushed down onto subway tracks and ended up with a degloved foot. The second adjacent trauma had been the man who’d tried to save her life. 

During the procedure to reset the woman’s foot, you were unfortunate enough to be closest to Victoria, who had been looking sick since the wrapping came off. Not wanting her to hit the ground, you stepped into her freefall and stuck your arms under hers, keeping her semi-upright while she became dead weight. 

Trinity looked over with a smirk. “Med students are playing dominos.” 

“Just didn’t want her to hit her head,” you grunted, easing her down until she was flat on the ground. “That’d be too much paperwork that I absolutely do not want to deal with on the first day.” 

An echo of “preach” followed your statement. 

“You’re certainly a good catch, slugger,” Trinity quipped. “Ever think about playing for the Pirates? I’ve heard their outfield has been struggling this season.” 

You shook your head and flashed her a sarcastic smile. “Sadly, I think my hand eye coordination is better for catching my peers instead of balls flying at 90 miles an hour. And I really don’t think my husband would been too keen on me switching careers this fast after one day.” 

You knew she wanted to say something back, maybe ask a question or throw another snarky remark, but you were quickly called away to help another resident. 

By noon, your brain was quickly getting overwhelmed with the sheer number of patients in the halls and the number still waiting to be seen. Thankfully, charting gave you a small moment to catch your breath, the tying quickly getting your mind off the panic that’d been building for a small while. While you sat there, you wished your phone would buzz even though you knew you wouldn’t. 

Andrew was out for the day, and that normally meant you wouldn’t see him until you got home after shift. But that was fine; you really didn’t need any distractions on your first day, mind too focused on making a good enough impression that they might consider you for residency after you graduated. 

The thought had you sighing, which somehow caught the attention of Dana just behind you. 

“Why the loud sigh, hun?” she asked, coming into your line of sight. “Shift treating you that bad already?” 

You winced, smile slightly slanted as you met her gray eyes. “It is bad I’m already ready for it to be over?” 

She smiled sympathetically. “Welcome to emergency medicine. This is how it’ll probably be for the rest of your time here.” 

“Should have gone into cosmetology then,” you joked. “Maybe the assholes there would be different than the assholes here.” 

“Ha!” Dana barked, hand coming down gently on your shoulder. “I like you, kid.” She turned back towards her board. “So, what’s your story. Why you here?” Her accented twang sounded lovely in your ears, comforting you in a way. 

“My husband, actually. We needed a fresh start; Pittsburg seemed like a good enough place to do so. We just moved from California.” 

She cocked her head. “Beaches not enticing enough for you to stay?” 

“I’m more of a mountains girl,” you responded. “Plus, I didn’t pick here. My first thought would have been Kentucky. But the gloom here was enough to satiate me.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you here. The Pitt can’t be a teaching hospital without people to teach.” 

You folded your hands on the desk. “I’m excited to learn.” 

Apparently, that had her handing you a tablet. “Then Room 4 is all yours, slugger.” 

A groan rumbled your chest as you stood. “Did Santos already blab about that?” 

“News travels fast everywhere, but it travels even faster in a hospital.” She tuned back towards her board. “Better get to your patients. Robby’s available for when you need him or find Samira; she’s probably looking for someone to help.” 

You looked down at the tablet. “Thank you, Dana.” 

“Don’t mention it, hun. It’s my job.” 

Your eyes trailed the tablet as you left the hub in search for your new attending or one of the senior residents. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for you to find Samira, the tablet still clutched to your front. 

“Dr. Mohan?” you asked as you walked up to her. “Dana handed me the chart for Room 4, and I was wondering if I could tag along with you for it?” 

“Samira is just fine.” Her deep brown eyes gleamed, matching her shining smile. “But sure! Mrs. Thompson is one of our regulars,” she began while walking in the direction of the room. “Her husband died a couple of months ago, and she has a history of OCD and hypochondria.” 

You hummed. “So for her, do you normally listen and bring her down?” 

“We at least try to. Sometimes we’ll give her plain saline but say it’s a medication so she believes she’s getting treatment.” 

“Isn’t that lying though?” you asked with pinched brows. 

Samira, in return, gave you an understanding look. “That’s just sometimes the best thing for her when she gets stuck inside her head.” She gave one knock on the door before entering with a large gin. “Hi, Mrs. Thompson. I’m Dr. Mohon, and we have one of our med students here if you’re comfortable with that.” 

Mrs. Thompson was exactly how you imagined her: graying hair, wide and scared eyes that roamed the room, and nervous hands that rested on her skirted lap. You stayed next to the door just in case she asked for you to step out. 

“No, that’s fine,” she answered, looking right at you. 

“Thank you, ma’am,” you answered before pulling the privacy curtain shut. 

You stayed close to Samira as she sat down on the edge of the bed. While she talked to Mrs. Thompson, you let your eyes roam while staying alert to any questions. However, once your eyes landed on the small side table, you noticed how the instruments weren’t that straight. Another thing you noticed was how Mrs. Thompson kept glancing towards them as well, and the twitch of her finger had you guessing that she too wanted to straighten them. Without saying anything, you shuffled quietly over and rearranged them from shortest to largest, also making sure that they were evenly spaced out while staying as straight as possible. When they were to your liking, you stepped back behind Samira in time to see Mrs. Thomspon take a large inhale, her shoulders relaxing just a bit more as she went over why she was in today. 

It wasn’t until you left the room that Samira put a hand on your shoulder. 

“What was with the instruments?” she asked. “

You took another glance back at the room. “You said Mrs. Thompson has a history of OCD, and she kept looking over at them. Her fingers would twitch each time she did. I thought I’d just go ahead and put them in order, thinking she might be able to focus more on what you were saying instead of overthinking about them.” 

Samira cocked her head. “Oh; I didn’t think about that. Great catch then.” 

“What did Slugger catch this time?” Trinity asked as she walked right up to the two of you, hands deep in her pockets, a wide smirk on her face. “Did your patient fall over this time?”  

“Our patient was showing non-verbal signs of an OCD tick,” you replied. “I just wanted to make her more comfortable.” 

“How’d you even know to look for stuff like that? Did you take a specific course in school?” Trinity asked. 

You shook your head. “Not really. Uh, my husband has OCD, and if you live with someone for long enough, you pick up on the little things.” 

Samira handed the tablet back to you. “Like I said, good catch. That was actually the smoothest conversation I’ve had with Mrs. Thompson before.” 

“Glad I could help,” you said. “Should I give this back to Dana since she’ll be discharged soon?” 

“That’d be great. I’ll find you when I get my next patient.” 

“Common, Slugger. Let’s see if there’s any other fun patients to grab,” Trinity said while taking your wrist. “Maybe the next one you can show of your catching skills again.” 

“Ha, ha.” 

_______________________

The one rule you should have paid more attention to was that if everything seemed to go well in the ER, it wouldn’t stay that way for much longer. With only one hour left of your shift, Robby announced a Code Triage alter, and your stomach sunk so deep you feared it’d disappear into your feet. 

“Okay, everybody listen up,” Robby yelled over the growing panic. “There is an active shooter at Pittfest. As the nearest trauma center, we are going to be getting the majority of the victims. We don’t know yet how many we are getting, but we are instituting hospital-wide emergency protocols. We need to move every patient out of here. They either go home, they go upstairs, or they go to Family Medicine. Call you loved ones now if you need to. I can guarantee your cell service will soon be overwhelmed. Eat something. Stay hydrated. Use the bathroom while there’s time and meet back here for a full briefing in five minutes.” 

With that, you quickly turned away, hand already digging for your phone. Your heart clenched at the screen that indicated you still hadn’t received any notification from Andrew, but that didn’t stop you from pulling up his contact and pushing the call button. When his voicemail answered instead, you closed your eyes and sighed sadly. 

“Hey, Andy. Um, listen, I’ll probably be home late tonight unless you want to come pick me up. There’s a shooter at that festival, and pretty much all hell’s about to break loose. If you try to call back, I probably won’t be able to answer. Just know I love you, and I’ll be home as soon as I can.” 

You ended the call there, hoping and wishing the cell service would hold enough for it to go through. Your hands were already slightly shaking as you put your phone back into your pocket, also sliding off your rings so they wouldn’t get lost. However, the moment you looked up, you froze completely. 

Because, for some odd reason, Andrew was currently talking to your attending like they’d known each other for years. You wanted to go up to him right then and there, but your feet kept you from doing so. Honestly, after a few moments, you were glad as it gave you enough time to figure out that, no, that man wasn’t Andrew at all. While they shared the same hazel eyes and muscular build, this man’s curls were salt-and-peppered where Andrew’s was still holding onto bits and parts of auburn. You also didn’t realize how long you were staring, brain desperately trying to separate Andrew and whoever this man was. 

Across the way, Jack could feel a pair of eyes on him, and one quick look had him finding your wide and confused eyes.

“Brother, you hiring med students with staring problems now?” he asked with furrowed brows. 

Robby turned around and also caught your surprised look. “Cody,” he called out, breaking you from staring at his friend. “Everything okay?” 

You shook your head. “Sorry, Dr. Robby. I'm just trying to figure out if my husband has a twin he never knew about,” you nervously laughed, eyes finding the man's ID tag. “I didn't mean to stare for so long, Dr. Abbot.” 

Jack waved a dismissive hand. "No trouble. You were just looking at me like you'd seen a ghost. And last I checked, I haven't died just yet."

That earned a small snort from your nose. "Thank goodness for that, yeah? However, I think if I see you and my husband in the same room, I might explode."

He smirked widely. "Well, we don't need that happening."

“Okay, party people, our first ambulance in on its way in, so let’s get moving,” Dana announced while walking right between the three of you. “Cody, go help Whitaker with the disaster bins.”

“On it.” You paused. “Again, sorry for staring, Dr. Abbot.” Without waiting for an answer, you turned away and began searching for your fellow M.S. 4, leaving the two attendings by themselves. 

“So, do you think her husband really looks like me?” Jack questioned after a short moment while his eyes followed where you were walking away. 

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve seen, brother.” 

 _______________________

By now, you were sweating more than a sinner in the middle of a Southern Baptist choir special. Blood dripped off your arms, your front, and onto your shoes. Everywhere you stepped squished with the thick liquid, and you knew you’d still smell the iron scent hours after you’d gone home. Thankfully, though, the worst was over, and like Dana announced, the Pitt would be opening back up soon to take in regular patients. 

Trinity shoulder nudged you slightly while you leaned on an empty gurney. “That was fucking exhausting.” 

“I can’t wait to get in my bed,” you replied with a groan. 

“With your husband that looks just like Dr. Abbot, right?” she teased. 

“Fucking fast traveling news.” You pushed yourself up, back protesting at the sudden change. “Hey, I need to go change, and I don't know if he's coming to pick me up or not. In the event that he does, if you happen to see him, can you let him know I'll be back soon?” 

Trinity smiled and nodded. “Oh, I definitely will!”

"Thank you, Santos," you replied, hand coming up to cover a yawn as you walked away in the direction of the locker rooms.

Trinity turned and ripped the smock off and pushed in down into the nearest bin. Around her, the ED gave a large sigh of relief, and everyone slowed down for the first time in hours. As she waited by the nurses’ station, she watched a few regular patients start to trickle in, but one in particular caught her attention.

The man was tall and rocked a head of auburn curls that were just starting to gray near his ears. His hazel eyes were narrowed as he looked out of place in his civilian clothes in a sea of scrubs and gowns. Trinity noted the amount of freckles that spanned across his face, and for one tiny moment, she saw a vision of Jack Abbot in his face. Not even a breath later, it clicked that the man was probably one who put that rock on your finger.

Her lips stretched into a smile, and she itched to walk up to him and ask if he was your husband. However, Samira, still in the adrenaline rush with a wide eyes, hastily walked up to him. Trinity didn't even think she knew that the man she was approaching was not the night shift attending she'd been stealing glances at between blood transfusions and saving lives.

"Dr. Abbot!" Trinity heard her all but yell right in the guy's face, voice a little too stretched. "I was hoping I'd catch you. I have a patient who's about to go up to the OR, but I need an attending's sign off on it first."

As she rattled off, Trinity watched the man looked at her with the most confused expression she’d ever seen someone have. His eyes had widened just a fraction, but that didn't stop him from looking around every so often like he was desperate to find someone who wasn't in the room. His mouth parted in an attempt to say something, but Samira, bless her heart, wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes stayed glued to the tablet in her hands.

“Oh, this is absolute gold,” Trinity muttered before turning to the charge nurse. “Hey, Dana. Look at this.” 

Dana’s attention moved from her board over to where the man was standing awkwardly while Samira continued to talk at him. “Did Abbot dye his hair?” 

“Not that I know of,” Jack responded, suddenly appearing at the nurses' station, brows pinched at Dana's question. “When would I have had time to dye my hair?” 

The sound of his voice must have caught Samira, because in the next moment, she looked up at the man like a dear caught in headlights. Horrified, she turned her head and met Jack's confused gaze that had moved from her and to the man she had been talking to.

For once in his life, Jack didn’t know whether to start laughing or run away. Because staring right back at him was a man that looked like him in pictures from 10 years ago. His brain struggled to comprehend until he remembered what you had said earlier before the chaos of the casualty.

"Oh."

By now, the commotion had drawn eyes from everywhere, and everyone who looked over wondered if they were truly seeing double. 

The man, who did look exactly like a younger Jack Abbot, walked quietly over to the station and stopped right in front of Jack, chest puffing slightly even if both of them were the same height. His hazel eyes scanned behind Jack's shoulder before he met hazel hues that mirrored his own.

“I’m looking for my wife,” Andrew finally gruffed, hands curling into fists by his side, and obviously not liking the number of eyes that were on him. “She works here.” 

Trinity stepped into his line of sight. “You must be Mr. Cody; damn, I was not expecting this. Slugger wanted me to let you know that she's changing, but she should be out soon.” 

His brows somehow furrowed deeper, and the corners of his mouth tugged downwards in a matching frown. “Slugger?” 

“Your wife has an affinity for catching people. Baseball might be her actual calling.” 

“Trinity, I told you that I have no want to switch careers, thank you very little," you announced after you walked out of the hallway. Your eyes gleamed when they landed on a very, uncomfortable-looking Andrew and equally confused coworkers. "Hi, baby."

Andrew looked over and down at you. “Hi.” 

“You didn't have to come pick me up,” you said. "I didn't mind driving home."

“Wanted to,” he muttered while taking your hand into his. "Knew you'd be tired."

You warmly smiled up at him. "Well, I'm glad you're here then." Your face turned as you looked over at the small crowd that had gathered; their jaws wide open. "I guess I should explain. Everyone, this is my husband, Andrew. Andrew, these are my coworkers." You gestured towards Jack. "And I guess this is your secret twin."  

Andrew stayed silent for a second too long. “Hi.” He offered nothing more than a fleeting moment of eye contact with each of them before turning to you with what people could only call puppy-dog eyes. “Ready to go?” 

“Yeah. Let's go home.” But before Andrew could tug you away, you quickly waved at everyone. “See y’all in twelve hours!” 

They all stayed silent as Andrew led you out of the ER with you babbling the entire way while he seemed to not say anything, just looking happy to be the center of your attention after a long day. 

Finally, Jack broke the silence. “I should probably call my mom and see if I had a twin she gave up and never told me.” 

Robby patted him on the shoulder. “You do that, brother.” 

The chairs had always felt vaguely cursed to you, even on good days. 

On bad days—days where the waiting room smelled too strongly of antiseptic and drying blood, where somebody’s kid was crying near the vending machines, where a grown man was acting like a child as he yelled about missing insurance—it felt like corporal punishment in its purest form. You’d been down there for nearly two hours already, bouncing between triage and lacerations and flu symptoms and a man who had somehow managed to staple his own thumb at work only fifteen minutes into his shift. 

By the third anti-vax mom, your patience had worn thin. And being exiled to chairs now felt less like staffing necessity and more like karmic retaliation. How were you supposed to know Robby was right behind you, listening in on very important Pitt gossip, and that he believed in the whole “if you had time to talk, you had time to work.” 

Thus, you’d been sent off to chairs until Robby deemed you cleansed of your sins. 

Because, unfortunately, chairs happened to be the closest thing the Pitt had to purgatory: the perfect place for hellfire and fractures and a waiting room from hell. People were packed shoulder to shoulder while irritated family members grumbled and complained about the temperature. The television in the corner played daytime reruns at an offensively loud volume, and every few minutes somebody new approached the desk asking how much longer the wait would be for something as simple (or ridiculous) as a cut hangnail. Their questions made you believe they thought you personally controlled time itself. 

Which, if you did, you would have made your shift go by a lot faster. 

But no. You did not control time. Time and a chief attending named Michael Robinavitch controlled you, and you hated every second of it. 

By the time you pushed back through the waiting room doors with another chart in your hand, a mechanical smile that didn’t quite meet your eyes plastered across your face. Your eyes glued to the tablet in front of you with the name Mrs. Hill stuck between your teeth. 

However, the name died in your throat after you glanced up. 

There, in the corner, near the far wall, sat Jack Abbot, all hunched over in one of the molded plastic chairs with his elbows on his knees, body stiff as a board almost as to not touch the chair at all, and hood pulled over his head despite the warmth of the waiting room. Your brows pinched, confusion plastered all over your face. For a second, Jack sitting there genuinely made no fucking sense. 

He was the night shift attending. He could walk through the ambulance bays whenever he needed. He’d be prioritized because the Pitt didn’t just look over one of their own and ban him to the chairs off all places to sit and wait with the rest of the common people. 

Jack also never sat still enough to like a garden statue. Even through exhaustion, even post-shift, you noticed that he carried this restless energy about him, like if he stopped moving for too long, he might actually wither away. 

You stared at him for another beat before walking over, Mrs. Hill be damned. 

“What the fuck, Dr. Abbot,” you hissed, stopping in front of him. “What happened to you, and why didn’t you walk through the back?” 

Jack slowly lifted his head, and a small something snagged uncomfortably in your chest. The feeling wasn’t alarming, and it wasn’t that guy from TikTok running back and forth across a field with an overly large flag yelling Red Flag! Red Flag! either. The cause of this feeling was the small curls peaking below the hood. 

Jack’s hair had always been salt-and-pepper for as long as you’d known him in the Pitt, causing the very serious nickname of a true “silver fox” to be tossed around when he wasn’t listening. But right now, Jack’s hair was dark, richer, and auburn almost. Near his temples, the deep, reddish-brown curls were flat under the fabric. 

But even with the recent hair dye, his face was Jack’s, your brain filling in the gaps automatically to the point you didn’t notice the way he was missing his sun spots and wrinkles that Jack normally dawned in the sexiest ways. 

“Hit my head,” he finally replied quietly. 

Even his voice sounded the tiniest bit off, however, your concern for him outweighed the missing features your Jack normally had. 

You frowned, couching slightly so you could get a better look at him, Robby’s “words of wisdom” about getting on the patient’s level ringing in your head. 

“Okay, that explains why you look like you got dragged behind an ambulance,” you said before reaching up to gently cup his face. 

This time, you didn’t miss the way he flinched under your palms before settling as you tilted his head to find the injury. 

“Did you pass out? Throw up? How long ago did it happen” You didn’t really wait for his answers before continuing, already slipping deep into assessment mode. “Actually, hold on, no, don’t answer all that because your pupils are clearly telling me you’re very concussed, and if you start slurring your words, you and I won’t get anywhere with delayed responses.” 

Jack’s eyes fluttered shut as you talked to him, and the weird feeling bloomed under your skin again. When his hazel met yours again, you let his face go and stood to full height. 

“C’mon, Dr. Abbot,” you sighed, motioning for him to stand. “You’re not sitting out here looking like a murder suspect all afternoon. Let me get you into a room before Robby sees you and starts berating me as to why you’re still out here.” 

His eyes lifted to yours fully, and the intensity almost stopped you cold. Jack looked at people all the time—quick glances, assessing looks, sharp little observations hidden behind sarcasm—but the way he was looking at you now was different. This Jack, looking at least fifteen years younger, looked directly as you with a heavy kind of focus that should’ve felt unsettling, like he was trying to learn your family’s history with once glance. Unlike your Jack (which you were still convinced was sitting right in front of you), he felt almost dangerous in how still he was and how carefully he watched. 

When he didn’t stand up to follow, you asked, “You gonna pass out if I make you walk? 

“No.” 

“Is your leg bothering you? I can get you a wheelchair if you need.” 

“I can walk.” 

“Great. Love your confidence.” 

He stood slowly, hands never touching the handles, body towering over you once he straightened fully. Again, another disjointed feeling washed over you. Jack was tall, yes, but he was now carrying himself so opposite of how he normally did. Here, he seemed disconnected from the room, like feeling the air was inconveniencing him. Now standing, you caught another glimpse of bruising near the edge of his jaw as you guided him through toward an empty room down the hall.

His silence was starting to get uncomfortable, so you found yourself talking just to fill the unusual quiet between you, even if talking had gotten you banished to chairs in the first place. 

“You know, Dr. Abbot, most people with concussions demand to be sent through immediately even if they aren’t an attending. Please tell me this isn’t you trying to not look weak in front of everyone? I bet they would rather you come through walking and talking than someone giving you a wellness check and finding you dead because you didn’t follow concussion protocol.” 

Behind you, he stayed silent. 

You busied yourself by pulling gloves on, still talking as he sat on the very edge of the exam bed, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists on his thighs. 

“Seriously though, Dr. Abbot, you scared me for a second out there. You looked half-dead sitting in that chair, which, honestly, kind of impressive for you because you usually can’t keep still. I guess that’s why you do SWAT and stuff, huh? One of these days you’re going to find out you’re not actually immortal even though people talk like you are. But what would I know, I’m just a nurse while you spend your free time getting shot at.” 

Finally, like broken pottery, the smallest smile cracked through his face. You blinked at him while his eyes refused to move anywhere but your face. 

“Okay,” you said slowly. “You are being deeply weird today. Are you okay?” 

His gaze dropped briefly before returning to your face. “Head hurts.” 

“That would be your concussion talking.” 

You stepped closer, gently tilting his head toward the light to examine the molted bruise near his temple. Unlike in the chairs, he didn’t flinch under your fingers this time. Up close like this, Jack’s differences stood out more. The lighting in the waiting room made everything seem worse under shadows, but the direct light washed away the wrinkles and lines around his eyes. 

And still, he kept staring at you with an unwavering intensity that made your knees go weak and made a warmth creep up your neck. 

“You’re very stare-y today,” you murmured distractedly while checking his pupils. 

“Sorry.” 

Your hands paused for a half a second at his promptness for an apology. 

As far as you knew, Jack never apologized that fast. 

However, the though slipped through your mind before you could stop it, but again, the concussion explained enough that you ignored every strange feeling creeping higher in your chest. Head injuries changed behavior sometimes. Personalities softened, reactions slowed, and people became emotional, subdued, clingy, and disoriented. You’d seen it first-hand countless times. 

Still. 

You moved back slightly to jot something onto the chart. “Any nausea?” 

“A little.” 

“Blurred vision?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Memory issues?” 

His eyes stayed on you. “Maybe?” 

“Can you tell me where you are?” 

“Pittsburg Trauma Medical Hospital.” 

You snorted softly. “Using the full government name. I see you Dr. Abbot. I’ll give you a gold star for incredible patient participation.” 

He didn’t laugh or smile at that this time. You continued to fill out his chart: name, birthdate, allergies. Thankfully, most of it was already in the system. Your eyes rose back to his when you finished up, chart getting tucked under your arm as you pulled the gloves off. 

“Okay, let me go get Robby since I highly doubt you’d want anyone else in here—” 

“Can you not tell anyone I’m here?” 

You cocked your head. “What?” 

His jaw tightened slightly, gaze flickering briefly toward the closed door before returning to you. “Don’t want people knowing.” 

Concern replaced every single weird feeling. Embarrassment after injuring wasn’t uncommon, especially with doctors, and even so more with attendings who weren’t used to being the ones under care. God knew Jack hated appearing vulnerable in front of his coworkers. 

“You do know they’re not going to make fun of you for getting a concussion. Robby might poke fun, but you are like his best friend.” Your eyes glanced toward the door. “Okay, maybe his only friend,” you added on with a mutter. 

He didn’t answer right away. 

You leaned against the counter, studying him for moment. The intensity was still there in the way he watched you, but his eyes held a sadness you’d never seen before. The hazel hues dripped with a scarcity that made your heart clench.

After a moment, you conceded. “Okay. Fine. Your secret is safe with me, Dr. Abbot.” You pointed at him with your pen. “But only because you’re looking at me like that. Special privileges are frowned upon here.” 

The faintly cracked almost-smile appeared again. 

And God help you, it looked surprisingly pretty on him, making you want more of it. 

_______________________

Purgatory had ended the moment you stepped out of the room and went diving head-first into the incoming trauma after Robby grabbed you by the shoulders and physically steered you into Trauma Room One. The entire department had gone from irritatingly busy to borderline catastrophic after a minor highway pileup flooded intake with a dozen patients and emergencies that clogged up the CT scan because their necks felt “a little weird.” 

Softened and concussed Jack Abbot fleed from your mind as you called out BP’s and administered correct dosages. You’d spent most of the last hour speed-walking between rooms with granola bar shoved into the pocket of your scrub jacket, half-finished notes beneath your arm, and a headache steadily building behind your eyes by the sterile light that never gave up buzzing for even a second. 

At one point, Dana moved you toward the break room and ordered you to eat something before you passed out in front of a patient. 

At another, Whitaker had nearly stepped into a pile of vomit while reading a chart, which honestly might have been the funniest thing you’d seen all week.  

Through it all though, you kept thinking about softened and concussed Jack. Every time you passed through the hallway leading toward his room, your eyes drifted toward the closed door, checking without meaning to whether he was still there. And honestly, you were surprised Robby hadn’t yelled at anyone—you—for taking up a room and not having a resident check in. 

When you finally nudged the exam room door open again with your shoulder, two awful vending machine coffees balanced carefully in your hands, the room was dimmer than before. He must have lowered the lights while you were gone, and you silently cured yourself for not doing that on your way out. 

To your surprise (or horror) he was sitting exactly where you’d left him on the exam bed, shoulders straight, back even straighter, hands still glued to his thighs like he didn’t know he was allowed to touch the bed beneath him. 

His head snapped up at the sound of the door opening, hitting you with that look before you could even mentally prepare for it. 

Most people only half paid attention after hours in an ER room. Patients looked tired, distracted, and uncomfortable; doctors were worse. Jack especially had always operated at a hundred miles an hour, his attention split between six different thoughts at once even when he focused on you. Here in the exam room, he looked at you completely like he was tracking every little expression crossing your face the second you walked into the room. 

The familiar warmth climbed embarrassingly fast into your chest and sat there. 

“Oh, good,” you said quickly, mostly because the silence suddenly made you self-conscious. “You’re still alive. I was starting to think you’d turn into a statue or died sitting up in here. That would really make my paperwork worse, so I’m very glad you’re still breathing.” 

His gaze dropped to the coffee cups in your hands before dragging up back to your face. 

“You brought me one.” 

The way he said it almost made it sound like he couldn’t quite believe why the hell you’d go out of your way to get one for him. 

You shrugged, cross the room toward him before holding one out carefully. “I use the word coffee loosely here, because I’m pretty sure the machine actually dispenses motor oil, but you looked miserable earlier, and caffeine fixes at least eighty percent of human suffering.” 

His fingers brushed yours when he took the cup. The contact lasted maybe a heartbeat, but it sent chills ripping up your arms. You turned away before he could possibly notice, pretending on the monitor beside him while taking a sip of your own coffee and instantly regretting it.

“Damn,” you muttered. “That’s genuinely horrific. I change my mind; this only fixes about 30 percent of human suffering and adds to the other percentage.” 

A faint hint of amusement crossed his face, and the sight made you beam. 

“You look handsome when you smile,” you blurted before you could even stop it. Your hands clapped over your mouth to the point it hurt. “I don’t know why I just said that.” 

Jack cocked his head, eyes still burning into your face. “Do I not normally?” 

Your heart clenched as you lowered your hands. “Um, I mean you do? But normally it’s when you’re about to say something so sarcastic it makes me want to pull my hair out.” 

His brows pulled together slightly at that, like he was trying to remember through the lingering fog of his concussion. 

You kept talking before he could say anything, words spilling naturally into the quiet space. “Actually, let me rephrase that. Usually you do smile, and it’s very nice, but it’s not normally after something I say. Also, is your head still hurting? You’re still staring at me like I’m a dessert you just want to eat, and that’s so unfair because I normally look at you like that and—” 

Another hand slap to your mouth. 

“Please ignore everything I’ve said in the past fifteen seconds. Or better, I’ll just stand here and wait for the floor to swallow me up. I’m talking way too much.” 

You found yourself fidgeting under his stare before stepping closer, coffee cup placed gently on the counter. “Is your head any better? Or still hurting?” 

“Hurting a little.” 

“Have you gotten dizzy?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Still feeling nauseated?” 

He nodded once instead of answering, and you wondered if he had hit his word limit for the hour. You sighed sympathetically while typing notes onto the chart. 

“If I had to spend hours in a chair listening to daytime TV and screaming children, I’d probably feel that way too. Your concussion doesn’t help either.” 

Another tiny smile quirked his lip even though he didn’t say anything else. You “allowed” him to stare at you while you finished updating the chart, his silent presence settling under your skin as you worked. The way he looked at you should have made you reach out for Robby the minute Jack started acting this way, but the intimidating way his droopy eyes never left your figure felt strangely calming. 

Which probably said concerning things about your taste in men, but the whole ER was pretty much putty in Jack Abbot’s hand. You were the white sheep in the flock, and you’d follow Shepherd Abbot anywhere. 

You turned away from the chart and leaned against the counter. “You know, Dr. Abbot, you’re allowed to talk in here. I know I tend to carry the entire social interactions, but this is kinda exhausting for me. Usually, I can barely get a sentence in around you.” 

His mouth twitched faintly. “Why’s that?” 

Your cheeks burned. “Well, um, medically that’s not important.” 

His eyes lingered on your face and the small area around your mouth longer than necessary, and once again you felt like melting and dramatically draping yourself across a Victorian fainting couch to blubber about your feelings for the concussed attending. 

To compensate for these feelings and the sterile quiet, you started talking more. 

“So chairs officially became a nightmare while you were hiding her, by the way,” you told him. “Some guy tried convincing triage he needed immediate treatment for a paper cut, which would’ve been annoying enough on its own except he kept trying to squeeze blood out of it like he was in a Victorian tuberculosis ward. Then Dana yelled at me for skipping lunch again, which, in my defense, I fully intended to eat until somebody—probably Ogilvie, that fucker—stole my yogurt from the fridge. Again. At this point I think he’s specifically targeting me.” 

The entire time you rambled, Jack listened without interrupting. He watched you pace while talking, energy buzzing unpleasantly beneath your skin from the nonstop pace outside. 

“And then this woman asked if I was old enough to be a nurse, which somehow turned into her husband asking if I were single while she was standing right here! Emergency medicine should qualify as psychological warfare.”

The last tidbit made a quiet laugh escape, and the sound pulled your attention back toward him. 

“At least you think I’m funny,” you said, pointing at him with exaggerated triumph. “Robby never thinks my jokes are funny. Don’t tell him I told you, but I think someone’s swapped him with a robot or AI engine that’s trying to convince everyone he’s a functioning person under all that brooding trauma.” 

His face softened, and for some reason that affected you more than the laugh had. The warm in your chest spread outward before you realized you’d been talking almost nonstop for several minutes. 

“Oh fuck,” you groaned, dropping your head briefly into your hands. “I’m doing it again.” 

Jack sat up a bit straighter if somehow possible. “Doing what?” 

“Talking too much.” You laughed awkwardly. “You’d think after enough years in medicine I’d learn when to stop speaking, but apparently not.” You looked down at your hands, suddenly embarrassed by how much space you’d filled with your own voice. “Sorry. You probably have a splitting headache and want to nap, but I’m over here narrating my entire day.” 

When you finally looked back up, his gaze was still resting on you with steady attentiveness. 

“I don’t mind it,” he admitted, tone close to a whisper. 

You blinked rapidly. 

“Your talking.” 

Something about the way he said it in the sincerest and honest way made your chest tighten. He glanced down at the coffee cup in his hands before looking back into your eyes. 

“Room’s less quiet when you’re here.” 

A bright smile tugged at your lips. “Thank you for listening then.” 

_______________________

The night shift always arrived like a storm rolling through the Pitt. 

While the ER was the ground, and the day shift staff floated around with enough caffeine to possible kill a small animal, the night shift trickled in like the rain, refreshing and very much welcomed to take over the atmosphere. The residents, including you, handed over your charts with sluggish movements, desperate to go home and sleep the day and loss of patients away. 

Normally, somewhere in the middle of all that transition, you and Jack inevitably found each other. Sometimes it was purely by accident; others it absolutely wasn’t. He’d appear beside you while you were finishing your charts just to bother you. You’d steal his coffee when he stopped paying attention. Always, there was some running commentary between the two of you, whether it be playful arguing or just an update on how social life outside the Pitt was going. 

Tonight, though, you barely noticed the shift change happening around you since you’d ended up back in his room again almost without realizing. Through the last few hours, checking on him had stopped feeling entirely professional. You still used plenty of legitimate excuses, of course; his concussion needed monitoring in case his symptoms changed. You were also technically responsible for him until discharge, but if you were being honest with yourself, looking after him had become dangerously easy. 

While the rest of the Pitt felt loud in comparison, his room felt quiet. 

You’d sit perched sideways on the rolling stool near the exam bed, updating charts while absentmindedly talking through how your shift was going. He listened quietly from where he sat on the raised bed, legs swishing back and forth now, his hoodie abandoned sometime during the last hour. 

Still, every now and then, your brain caught onto his staring and stumbled. 

“You know,” you said while typing notes, “Dana threatened to physically drag me into the break room earlier because apparently surviving on caffeine and spite isn’t medically advisable. Which honestly is very hypocritical considering more than half the staff here are one inconvenience away from cardiac arrest.” 

You looked up from the chart in time to catch a small smile. 

“I’m glad you still think I’m funny even with brain damage. The cryptic staring can only last for so long.” 

His eyes stayed steady on you. “Maybe.” 

You giggled. “Still terrible at conversations, though. Truly tragic.” 

While you were keeping him company, across the department, Jack Abbot had just walked into the Pitt, dressed in his scrubs and already talking. 

“Tell me somebody restocked trauma two, because if I have to hunt down another chest tube tonight, I’m filing a formal complaint against humanity.” His voice carried easily across the department. 

He shrugged out of his jacket while walking, salt and pepper curls slightly windblown from outside, already grinning at something Dana said near the nurses’ station. 

“Four minutes late, by the way,” Dana informed him when he got closer. 

“Still counts as on time in emergency medicine.” 

“For an attending, you sure are incredibly wrong some of the time.” 

“Key word being some and not all the time.” 

Robby looked up from a chart with visible exhaustion. “I need you both to come down from a level eight to a level zero.” 

Jack chose to ignore him, eyes already scanning around the room. When he didn’t find who he was looking for, he frowned slightly. “Where’s she at?” 

Dana smirked before Robby could respond. “Interesting that you looked for her before your patients.” 

“She’s less mean to me,” he replied without thinking, tossing his bag onto the counter. 

“She’s been in one room half the afternoon,” Dana responded casually. “Concussed male.” 

The minute her words ended, something subtle shifted in Jack’s chest. It probably wasn’t noticeable to people who didn’t know how Jack Abbot ticked, but Dana noticed, and her smirk turned downright evil. 

“Aww,” she drawled. “Somebody jealous?” 

Jack scoffed a tad too quickly to sound convincing. “I’m not jealous; I’m concerned.” 

“Sure you are.” 

Jack rolled his eyes hard enough to qualify as a medical even before pushing away from the counter. “I’m going to make sure she hasn’t adopted another emotionally damaged patient.” 

Even as he said it, irritation had already begun creeping unpleasantly under his ribs. 

One room all afternoon.

He knew how you got with certain patients; you were too soft-hearted for your own good sometimes, despite how hard you tried to pretend otherwise. But something about imagining you tucked away somewhere for hours giving another man the kind of attention you usually guarded carefully made something territorial and irrational bubble under his skin. 

Back inside the room, you were still smiling down at your chart when you finally pushed yourself upright from the stool. 

“All right,” you sighed. “I should probably go check whether the Pitt has fully descended into anarchy without me.” 

His eyes followed you as you moved toward the door. “You’ll come back?” 

You stopped for half a second, turning lightly and fully surprised enough by the quietness of his question that warmth spread through your being. 

“Yeah,” you said softly. “I’ll come back.” 

Your stomach flipped when his expression changed from a tight, worriedness to a soft, placated expression. Needing to escape before you could embarrass yourself further, you swung the door open and stepped into the hallway, holding the chart to your chest while talking over your shoulder toward him. 

“Seriously, though, if you try sneaking out before I get back, I’ll actually—” 

You voice cut off when your eyes landed Jack standing halfway down the hallway staring directly at you. It was almost like your brain hit the power mode and shut down completely, because Jack Abbot—your Jack Abbot was standing right in front of you. 

Alive. 

Healthy. 

Definitely not concussed unlike the Jack—now not-Jack—you had spent hours sitting beside. 

Your pulse dropped so hard it almost hurt. 

Behind him, Robby slowed slightly, noticing the way all color drained from your face. Jack’s teasing grin faded into confusion as he took in the way you stared at him like you’d just seen a ghost. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said slowly, concern beginning to edge beneath the nickname. “You okay?” 

You couldn’t answer as your eyes darted toward the closed room behind you, then back to Jack, then back again, then back to Jack one more time. Him standing there was impossible, so entirely impossible. Your heartbeat climbed into your throat. 

Jack took another small step closer when you failed to answer. “Hey. What’s wrong?” 

You blinked once before bolting back into the room. 

“What the hell—” Jack muttered, following after you without hesitation while Robby moved right behind him. 

He was the first through the doorway and stopped right as he went in. The air dropped almost noticeably. The man sitting on the exam bed had lifted his head slowly at the sound of the door opening, and for one disorienting second, it genuinely looked like Jack was staring at another, younger version of himself. 

The man’s auburn hair caught warmly in the lighting while bruising shadowed one side of his face. He sat completely still on the bed, one hand loose around a cup Jack knew you had brought him at some point, his expression unreadable as he stared back at Jack. 

Jack didn’t move, and you stood frozen near the corner, chest rising too fast while your brain desperately tried to recover from the fact that somehow—somehow—you had spent nearly an entire shift accidentally flirting with a completely stranger wearing Jack Abbot’s face. 

Silence stretched painfully. 

Behind Jack, Robby pinched the bridge of his nose. “Absolutely not,” he muttered under his breath. “Secret twins are above my pay grade. My sabbatical cannot come sooner enough.” 

And before any of you could stop him, he turned around and walked directly back out of the room, letting the door click shit behind him, leaving only you, Jack, and the stranger sitting on the exam bed staring at one another in stunned silence. 

_______________________

Nobody moved. 

You still stood frozen near the corner clutching the chart so tightly your knuckles were white, while across the room Jack remained rooted just inside the doorway staring at the man like he genuinely could not process what he was seeing. 

The resemblance was worse with both of them in the same room. They weren’t identical, but close enough that your brain kept trying to overlap them anyway with their same eyes, same mouth, same build. The now-stranger looked like someone had taken Jack and stripped ten years off him, softened the gray from his hair, and carved away some of the sharpness age and multiple years as an ER attending had left behind. 

And suddenly you felt violently aware of every single thing you’d said over the last several hours. Heat flooded your face so quickly you thought you might actually die from humiliation right then and there. 

To break the cursed silence, Jack finally spoke first. “What . . . the hell . . . is this?” 

The stranger’s gaze shifted toward him calmly. Unlike you, he didn’t seem particularly unsettled by the situation. If anything, he looked mildly tired. The concussion probably wasn’t helping matters, but even beyond that there was still the same strange unwavering presence about him. You found yourself staring at him helplessly. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” you blurted, voice climbing in disbelief as you looked at him. “I spent like almost twelve hours calling you Jack.” 

He looked back at you for a moment before answering. “My name’s Andrew.” 

Jack let out a sharp disbelieving laugh. “Andrew?” 

You shook your head. “Okay, no. You had so many opportunities to correct me, and you’re just now telling me your name?” 

Andrew’s expression shifted slightly into something more apologetic. “Tried to.” 

“You absolutely did not!” 

“A little.” 

“You said maybe four words all day!” 

“You talked fast.” 

You dropped your face into one hand, mortification crashing over you in waves now that the shock had worn off enough for your brain to start replaying the day in horrifying detail. “I told you that you were handsome.” 

Jack’s head snapped toward you so fast it was almost comical. “You what?” 

“Not talking to you Jack,” you shot back. 

He stared at you in open betrayal. “I walk in here and find out you’ve been flirty with my concussed doppelganger all day?” 

“I DIDN’T KNOW HE WASN’T YOU! HE’S LITERALLY WEARING YOUR FACE! WHAT WAS I SUPPOED TO DO?” 

“Um, I don’t know, sweetheart, check first that it was actually me? 

Andrew watched the entire exchange quietly, and to your absolute horror, there was the faintest hint of delight on his face. 

You looked between the two men. “This is actually my worst nightmare.” 

“Mine too,” Jack muttered before his eyes narrowed slightly when he looked back toward Andrew. “Hold on. You seriously never corrected her?” 

Andrew was quiet as he kept looking at you. “I liked listening to her.” 

Something fluttered in your chest. His words weren’t necessarily romantic, but he said it with such earnest that you couldn’t help but melt a bit. Jack clearly felt something too because his mouth pinched in irritation. You recognized it as the look he got whenever another one of the radiologists flirted with you for too long at the nurses’ station. 

Jack Abbot was reeking with actual jealousy. 

He looked away first, jaw tightening slightly before he exhaled through his nose and pointed vaguely toward the hallway. “Sweetheart.” 

You tore your gaze from Andrew to look at him. “What?” 

“Go do your handoffs.” 

Your brows lifted. “Jack—” 

“Go,” he repeated, still watching Andrew instead of you. “Before Dana starts a manhunt.”

You hesitated, sensing the almost openly hostile vibe Jack was giving off. It was certainly heavy enough that you suddenly felt like you were standing in the middle of something private. Andrew sat watching Jack with the same unreadable stillness while Jack looked back at him with visible suspicion. It genuinely felt like watching two wolves silently size each other up. 

You pointed between them uncertainly. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.” 

“No promises,” Jack muttered. 

Your eyes rolled back deeply. “You are unbelievably exhausting.” 

Then, after one last glance toward Andrew and a silent wave goodbye, you slipped out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind you. 

Jack crossed his arms slowly over his chest, leaning back against the closed door while studying the man in front of him more carefully now that the initial shock had worn off. Up close, the differences stood out more clearly, but enough resemblance lasted to make the situation deeply irksome. 

Andrew continued to stare, though his lips had quirked up well before you had left the room. 

Jack exhaled sharply and shook his head. “You know, most people would correct someone after the fifth time they got called the wrong name.” 

Andrew’s gaze drifted over his shoulder like he could almost see you through the wooden door. “She was nice. Didn’t want to upset her. She looked like she was enjoying the idea of getting to take care of you.” 

An unpleasantly possessive feeling twisted deep in Jack’s gut at the quiet sincerity of his answer. He understood why the man in front of him had gotten such a reaction from you. Andrew didn’t deflect; he said simple truths in a low steady voice that was somehow worse than flirty in his eyes. 

Jack rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Did you flirt back?” 

Andrew considered the question for a moment. “Didn’t have to since she did all the talking.”  

And to his credit, he didn’t smirk afterward or act smug about it. If anything, he almost looked sad as he stood slowly from the exam bed. Even concussed, he carried himself with a height that made Jack very aware of the man when he moved. Jack puffed his chest out without meaning to, an instinctive reaction to the man who had held your attention for an entire day. 

Andrew stepped close enough that now they both could look each other in the eye at the same height, making Jack almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. 

“You have a good girl,” Andrew said quietly, never looking away from hazel eyes that mirrored his own. “Don’t let someone else get to her first.” 

The fact that Jack could picture you getting swept off your feet by another man felt like a punch directly to his chest. He’d been hiding behind teasing remarks and heavy sarcasm and blatant flirtation because it was easier than admitting how badly he wanted you. He couldn’t fathom the idea of someone, much softer and gentler than he might ever be, taking the chance he was too scared to. Andrew was an example of that man, someone who sat still long enough and quiet enough to let you feel seen and heard without interruption. 

Because while he was falling behind, some concussed stranger who happened to share his exact face had managed to make you blush just by listening carefully. 

Jack stared at Andrew for another long moment before muttering, “You know, I really don’t like this.” 

“Do you not like this because I’m making you uncomfortable? Or do you not like this because I’m finally a wakeup call?” Andrew answered before stepping past him toward the door. 

Jack whirled around. “Where are you going?” 

Andrew opened the door with one hand. “To get discharge papers. Even though I enjoyed hearing her talk, I do not want to sleep in a hospital bed.” He paused. “You could probably go talk to her. Never know if another one of us might waltz through that door.” 

The door swung shut behind him a second later, leaving Jack standing alone in the suddenly too-quiet room. For maybe three seconds, he stayed there staring at the empty doorway before he swore softly under his breath and headed out after you. 

He found you near the nurses’ station halfway through handoff, leaning over a chart while Dana talked beside you. The second you noticed him approaching, your entire expression shifted somewhere between lingering embarrassment and outright panic. He didn’t slow down. 

“Dana,” he interrupted the blond charge nurse mid-sentence. 

She stared at him over her nose. “What?” 

“I need her for a second.” 

Her eyes tracked between him and you for a beat, and disappeared, though not before throwing you a deeply interested look over her shoulder. The moment she was gone, silence settled between you and Jack in a rather awkward way. 

You looked down at your hands. “So.”

“So,” he echoed. 

A soft groan pushed through your lips while your hands covered your face. “I cannot believe I spent an entire afternoon thinking your doppelganger was you with a concussion.” 

“I can’t believe you called him handsome and still thought it was me when he didn’t do anything.” 

“Hey,” you whined, lips jutting in a pout. “I was under emotional distress because I thought you had a severe concussion!” 

“You know he liked you,” Jack teased with a smirk for half a second before his face dropped into a more serious look. “I don’t blame him, though.” 

You swallowed once. “Jack—” 

“I’m serious. And honest? I’m jealous as hell that he got to spend an entire shift with you.” 

Warmth rushed to your face. “You’re jealous of your own face?” 

“I don’t think that was my point, sweetheart.” He stared down at you. “I think I’ve been screwing this up for a while and seeing him just made me very aware of it.” 

Your chest tightened. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” he said slowly, “I keep joking around with you because if I actually said what I’ve been feeling, I’d probably mess it all up.” He ran a hand through his curls, almost frustrated by the lack of words to describe his feelings. “I like you,” he admitted finally. “Like . . . really like you.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh softly under your breath in disbelief. “It took your twin from another universe getting a concussion for you to finally say that?” 

“Apparently, yeah.” 

Your smile widened helplessly, and Jack’s gaze briefly dropped to your mouth before lifting back to your eyes. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

The fact that he asked nearly ruined you on the spot. You nodded once before your brain could catch up enough to overthink it. But apparently that’s all Jack needed because the next moment, his warm hands slid carefully against your waist as he pulled you closer. Unlike all the teasing flirtation that existed between you for months, the kiss itself felt so intensely severe your knees almost buckled. 

There were no games, no smug comments, just Jack kissing you like he’d wanted to for a very long time, his concussed double finally being the last straw to do so. 

By the time you finally pulled apart, both of you were smiling a little stupidly. 

And somewhere down the hallway, you were almost certain you heard Dana yell, “FINALLY!” 

You didn't understand how you'd been able to score Jack Abbot.

Somehow, the universe decided that you'd be his match, the one he chose to go home to at the end of a bad shift, the one who'd been able to give him the most comfort during his darkest days. You knew what you'd be getting into: the PTSD, the depression, shifts where he felt more like your boss than your partner. But you believed you could get through it; Jack was older, and you liked to think you were mature enough to handle anything thrown your way.

For almost a year, your relationship bloomed in stolen glances across the Pitt, hidden moments in supply closets, and late-night baths spent at his house trying to bury yourself next to his heart. Jack was it for you, and you let yourself dream about a future, ring on your finger, possible children running around the house you shared. The two of you rarely fought, often choosing to apologize for anything under the sun before arguments grew too large for your feelings.

Never once did Jack make you feel inadequate, even if you had voiced early on that you truly didn't understand why he picked you. Compared to his gorgeous salt-and-pepper curls and freckled skin and large stature, you felt plain. Your hair was always pulled into a slick ponytail, makeup caused acne breakouts after 12-hour shifts, and what little time you had to yourself, you spent it at home, reading a book, instead of going out with friends and colleagues. People looked at you without so much as a second glance. Jack, on the other hand, made heads turn and nurses blush if they somehow caught his attention long enough for him to send a look their way. You couldn't remember the last time you went through a shift where a female (or sometimes male) patient failed to make a comment about the sexy, silver fox doctor.

You never made it more than it was: harmless flirting from people Jack would never think about again once they got discharged.

After, you and he had gone through the HR meetings, the contract signings, and the swearing that your relationship wouldn't get in the way of saving lives or have Jack start playing favorites. To further this, around the 9-month mark of being Jack's, they plucked you from the safety of the nightshift and dropped you right into Robby's hands. But this was how it was going to be from now on; there was no point in arguing as long as you got to keep Jack.

For three months, you persevered. Finding a groove with an already well-oiled shift proved to be harder than it looked. People talked. Nurses gossiped. Doctors speculated. You, through it all, kept your chin high. Their words didn't get to dictate your relationship. During handoffs, Jack still swept you into his arms and kissed you like a man coming back from war. He still told you that dinner was in the fridge once you got home and napped. He still continued to send updates during his shift, text messages from the separate night-shift group chat made after your departure chiming loudly while you ate. And most important of all, he still loved you.

However, nothing could have prepared you for the three times you felt the most unloved. I care, I care, I care, like perfume that you wear, I linger all the time, watchin', hidden in plain sight, ooh, I try, I try, I try, but it takes over my life, I see you everywhere, the sweetest torture one could bear "Hey, Dana," you called out while swimming through the chaos only brought on by a 4th of July shift.

At her name, Dana looked up over the thin frames of her glasses, pausing momentarily to look your way before going back to her board. "Please don't tell me that the 36 hot dog guy is back."

You shook your head, hands coming to rest on top of the vinyl counter. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Thank heavens. What can I do for ya, hun?"

Leaning in, you did a quick glance around the department. "I heard Jack was here early?"

Her eyebrows almost rose to her hairline. "Yeah; he came in with one of his SWAT buddies. GSW to the man's neck, but it looks like he's going to be okay." She reached over and grabbed a tablet. "Actually, can you find Jack for me? He wanted an update ASAP."

Your fingers drummed against the counter anxiously before you took the tablet from her. "I was just about to ask if you'd seen him."

Dana glanced over your shoulder and stuck out her chin in the same direction. "Saw him duck into Room 15. Might be taking a breather; Lord knows he needs one after that raid." She gave you a knowing look, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Maybe you're exactly what he needs."

A rush of heat flooded your face, eyes darting away from hers. "I'll see if I can find him."

You turned away before she could say anything more, hands desperately holding the tablet to your chest. Your shoes squeaked against the tile floor, steps bringing you closer to the room Jack was supposedly in. Once at the door, you raised a hand to draw the curtain away, but the sound of voices—plural—had you stopping. Saliva pooled between your teeth as you listened closely.

"—is the hospital going to pay for it?"

There was a pause before Jack clearly grumbled, "I'll pay for it."

You slowly moved to the side next to the wall where the curtain didn't completely cut the room off. Through the slot, your eyes widened at the sight of a Jack, shirt off, pale chest, wound-care swab twirling in his fingers with Samira sitting in one of the chairs. In the next beat, she stood and walked right past the curtain slot, completely oblivious that you were right behind it. She stopped near the wall and grabbed a pair of gloves before snapping them on.

His brows furrowed. "What are you doing?"

She smiled before rounding to stand behind him. "What you clearly can't."

Begrudgingly, he handed over the swab.

"Did you make a chart?" she asked while dipping the cotton end into a wound cream.

Jack crossed his arms, and his shoulders rolled and dipped. "No. This can stay off the books. Don't need the paperwork from the hospital or police department."

Samira paused. "Would you rather me go get Dr. [Name]? I'm sure she could do this much better than I could."

"No," Jack responded, shaking his head. "She'd just panic about this. There's no need to throw her off her game."

Your stomach flipped. He thought you'd panic? Sure, you'd be worried, but it wasn't like you hadn't seem him hurt before. Whatever wound he had on his back wouldn't be the worst thing he'd come home with after a SWAT shift.

"Isn't she your girlfriend?" She began dabbing at his back, the swab coming back bloodied.

"Yeah, but it's different with you. I don't have to worry about you taking your time or being indifferent about this." He winced at a deeper brush into the graze. "She's not like you, Dr. Mohan. She wears everything on her sleeve. Really, she could learn how to be more level headed like you, Dr. Mohan. I've seen the way you handle traumas. We wouldn't be so in the low if we had about 10 more of you."

He ended with a chuckle like what he just said didn't feel like a knives to your stomach.

Is that what he really thought about you? That you should be more like Samira and her ability to stay cool through anything thrown at her? With a blink, your eyes glossed over.

Jack turned his head, neck twisting to he could meet Samira's eyes. "You won't tell her about this, right? Our little secret?"

You didn't stay to hear what she said, choosing to turn around before you could watch any longer. It was incredible that you were able to stay for so long, submitting yourself to a new kind of torture. Walking back to the nurses station, your steps slowed as if molasses coated the floor, its stickiness clinging to your shoes.

At your oncoming presence, Dana looked over. "Did you find him, hun?"

You forced yourself to not look back at the closed curtain. "Yeah, but he's in the middle of something right now. I'll just catch up with him later."

The tablet gave a small thud as you placed it back into the holder, and you desperately tried to find another patient to busy yourself with, specifically one furthest from Room 15. However, before you could grab one, a hand wrapped around your elbow and tugged.

"Hey, I need you for the incoming trauma," Langdon said as he dragged you with him. "Twenty-year-old female, unconscious for an unknown matter of time."

You nodded silently, allowing him to keep walking you like a dog on a leash until he stopped in front of the ambulance bay sliding doors. Your lungs expanded in a deep, wavering breath.

Now was not the time to panic. You could do this. You could be like Samira. You could show Jack that you could handle a trauma.

During your internal pep talk, the doors slid open, giving way for the gurney and two paramedics.

"BP is 140-over-92 and climbing. No relevant medical history. She woke up once on the way over and vomited before passing out again."

You quickly followed Langdon into the first trauma room and helped transfer her over onto the bed. Immediately, numbers started being shouted while you started your initial exam.

When nothing seemed to blare any red flags, Langdon started impatient as the woman kept deteriorating. Through it all, you willed your hands to stay steady, your mind calm while you mentally went through what could be the matter. You took a step forward, body positioning near her head so you could look at her pupils one more time, and that's when you smelled it: the acrid, fruity smell puffing out of her mouth as she struggled to breath.

You jerked back quickly. "Dr. Langdon, is there a history of diabetes or hyperglycemia? Her breath smells like rotting fruit."

Langdon looked over at you before leaning toward her face. He hissed a curse before barking for a blood sugar test. Your eyes widened when the screen flashed a 450 mg/dL.

"She's experiencing diabetic ketoacidosis," you breathed.

"Let's get her on an insulin drip, now," Langdon hissed, face pinched until he looked over at you with a softer expression. "Great job catching that and staying calm." He chuckled slightly. "Never seen you like this but keep it up."

You knew his words were meant to be encouraging, but all they did was send bile up your throat. Without saying anything more, you tore off the gloves and shoved them deep into a biohazard bin. You wanted to cry, wanted to find the nearest restroom and tug at your hair.

But that's not what Samira would do your mind provided; the thought ugly and green. She'd shrug it all off and keep working like nothing was the matter.

Your teeth ground together, shoulders squaring in tandem. If everyone would rather have you calm, you'd be calm. You'd tuck your heart away rather than show it to the patients who needed someone that wore it on their sleeve. You picked up another tablet at the nurses station and got back to work.

The rest of the fourth went by in a tornado. Systems went down after a cyberattack; fireworks boomed off in the distance; you stayed busy. Each of your patients were in and out at a lightning speed, and by the start of the night shift, you were ready to go home and cry your heart out into a pillow.

You'd seen Samira every so often in between patients and a small lunch break. Like always, she smiled at you and waved and chatted when she could, but her actions made you want to wither up like a dead flower. You couldn't help but stare at her, thinking that you should be more like the woman in front of you, mind comparing your features to hers at a rapid speed you couldn't stop. She somehow looked like an angel in the middle of a place jokingly nicknamed one of the seven layers of hell, skin clear and hair somehow perfectly put in a bun. You tried your best to match her enthusiasm, but the poison had already been drank.

On the contrary, the only time you really saw Jack was at the start of handoffs. He had helped with one trauma before going to the on-call room for a needed nap, and you hadn't wanted to talk to him then, scared of how he'd act around you.

"There you are, sweetheart," you heard him say as you finished up converting with Lena about the man in Room 5. "I've been looking for you. Thought you might have left without saying goodbye."

You winced slightly. "No; I've just been busy."

Jack hummed and smiled warmly at you, but the expression was tainted by his words earlier. "I heard. Langdon's been nothing but praising you for earlier. I'm proud of you."

"Sure you are," you muttered too lowly for him to catch. Your lips thinly stretched into a smile that didn't meet your tired eyes. "Thank you, Jack," you settled on instead.

His hazel eyes scanned over your face, and his smile slightly dropped. "Are you okay, though? You look a little down."

"I'm fine," you shot out. "Today's just been long, and I'm ready to get home."

Jack nodded. "I left food in the fridge for you, so make sure you eat it after you sleep for a bit."

"Got it."

He looked at you expectantly before rolling his eyes. "Come here."

Like it had been etched into your DNA, you listened and fell into his open arms, face tucking into his chest. He squeezed you tightly before placing a kiss to your temple.

"Proud of you," he said. "You do such a good job. We need so many doctors like you, my perfect girl."

Perfect felt like a twist of the knife, because if you were so perfect, why had he told Samira that he wished you were more like her? I feel your compliments like bullets on skin. Dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate, well, aren't you the greatest thing to ever exist? As the weeks went on, Jack's words never left your soul, the damage irreparable in everything that you did.

Second guessing yourself had been a struggle you'd dealt with since an earlier age. Normally, Jack would be able to quiet all those thoughts; he had chosen you; he loved you. But now, as you second guessed everything you did, you also second guessed everything Jack said. You picked apart every encouragement, every compliment, every sweet promise he whispered in your ear.

What he said now couldn't be taken at face value, and you wondered if that feeling would ever go away. You'd asked him about the bullet graze a few days after the 4th, acting completely oblivious to what you knew. Like you thought, Jack assured you that he got it handled and for you to not worry about it, like that did anything to settle the rolling feelings in your stomach.

You tried your best to move on, knowing you'd only bring yourself down more if you dwelled too long about really how much Jack's words had affected you while he never said anything directly to your face. The idea that he wanted you to be like someone else made your heart clench tightly to the point you often wanted to call off work, hoping that you could just wallow in self pity for hours and hours.

But the Pitt did not care for you like that; it demanded twelve hour shifts and grueling doubles. So every day, you rolled out of bed before Jack got home and pulled up your big girl pants.

You worked through it. You'd learned how to stay calm, how to not panic under duress, and it killed you to admit that you'd become a better doctor because of it. You hardly ever hiccuped during a trauma, gaining compliments from the surgeons and Robby for your techniques that were close to flawless. For the smallest second, you would preen under their words before the ugly, repulsive reminder that they might not be real swallowed you down in a nasty gulp.

"Dr. [Name] follow me please," Robby called as he brushed past the nurses station where you were currently typing away at a chart, hands clutching a chart out in front of him to read. "Quickly."

You pushed up from the desk, chair rolling far behind you from the force of your legs. Not wanting to lose him, you rounded the counter and jumped into his long stride.

"Yes, Dr. Robby?" you asked.

As far as you knew, there weren't any incoming traumas and it was too late in the day for him to have questions about your patients that were currently waiting for a room.

Robby paused in front of an empty trauma room. "Jack just let me know that he found a man in need of medical attention and is bringing him in before handoffs, and I thought you could help him out." He handed you the tablet, already ready to go with updated information.

You took a quick glance over this. "Um, Dr. Robby, it looks like he'll need a pericardiocentesis."

"It's good that you know exactly what he'll need. What's the issue?"

Your eyes looked from the screen to his brown eyes. "I've never done one before."

He simply smiled at you and patted your shoulder. "That's why Jack's going to lead you through it. I would stay, but since he's coming in early, I'm going to head out."

You tried to quirk a smile. "Got a hot date waiting for you?"

A low chuckle shook his shoulders. "You got jokes. My bike needs some repairs, and today's the only day I can get it into the shop. But I know you'll be just fine. Your improvement in traumas will only grow if you step out of your comfort zone."

The automatic sliding doors slid open, and Jack plus a nurse wheeled a man through on a gurney. Jack's eyes lit up at the sight of you, but his brows pinched when he noticed Robby's bag slung over the taller man's shoulder.

"You leaving early, brother?" Jack questioned as he stepped past the two of you.

Robby's hand gently rested on your shoulder. "Yeah, but you two will have this handled."

You inhaled deeply, the weight of his hand and words pushing down on your chest.

Robby was counting on you. Don't fuck this up. Don't panic.

With the tablet tucked under your arm, you walked into the trauma room before pulling on a pair of gloves. Jack had already cut through the man's shirt.

"I need two 18-gage needles, one 9cm and one 15cm, a guidewire, dilator, and 8Fr pigtail catheter." He looked up toward Jesse. "Let's give him 10ml lignocaine 1%."

You quickly gather what he needed and placed him on the dressing that covered the side tray.

"Okay, Dr. [Name]," Jack said, lips twitching upwards at using your official name, "I need you to place an ECG electrode on the pericardiocentesis needle with a crocodile clip and insert. Once the tip touches the myocardium, the trace should show immediate ST elevation. Once that comes up, insert the wire to aspirate the fluid."

His words tumbled through your mind much too fast to the point that you wondered if he didn't know you'd never done this before. You pursed your lips as you tried to remember everything. In the grand scheme of things, your training provided everything that needed to be done.

Yet, there was a big difference between studying and actually doing the procedure.

You kept your breath steady as you readied the needle, clamping on a clip before turning the pointed end toward the man's chest. The first part went smoothly, and the needle went right through. However, instead of the consistent beeping that should have followed if the needle was in properly, an onslaught of alarms sounded through your ears.

You had missed something.

Jack whipped his head toward you and sneered. "You went too deep. I told you that the needle needed to touch the myocardium not go all the way through. Give it here."

He didn't even wait for you to transfer the needle over, hands already grabbing at it. His head bent down so he could see what was happening. With a practiced ease, he maneuvered the needle exactly where it should have been.

"Fuck," he whispered, "Robby wouldn't have done that. I don't know why he handed this off to you if he knew the patient would need a pericardiocentesis for tamponade."

You thickly swallowed pooling saliva to clear your throat. "Sorry."

"Just—" He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. "I'll finish up here. You go home."

You jolted just a bit. Go home?

"Jack, I can still assist. You're going to need—"

"We have it covered. Catheter is in place, and you'd just be standing around. You're good."

Suddenly, a wave of anguish flowed through your body. It was happening again. Jack had just added fuel to the ever growing fire of jealousy and self-loathing. The feeling sized your chest, and you stepped back from the bed, shaky hands ripping off the nitrile gloves.

You couldn't help the stressed wheeze that pushed from your lungs.

Don't panic. Don't panic. He didn't mean it. He was just stressed. He didn't know that you'd never done that before.

Numbly, you walked back to the nurses station and sat back down in front of the computer, but your hands didn't raise to the keyboard. Your mind had already taken over, spewing rotten things about yourself that you could fix.

Be like Samira. Be like Robby. Jack won't keep wanting you if you aren't like them.

Your tongue ran across your dry lips in an attempt to wet them, but even your mouth had gone parched.

"Is charting really that bad?" you heard Dennis ask you as she sat down at a computer to your left. "You look like someone just told you they flushed your fish down the drain."

In a jerky motion, you turned towards him and did your best to compose yourself. "Oh no. I, uh, I didn't do well on a procedure with Dr. Abbot, and he asked me to leave."

Dennis at least had the decency to look sorry for you. "I bet you didn't do too bad. What was the procedure?"

"A pericardiocentesis," you said shyly.

He nodded slowly. " Shit, that's like one of the first things Robby let us do." He turned towards his own chart. "I could probably do them in my sleep by now."

Because he wasn't looking at you, Dennis missed the way your shoulders dropped and tears welled in your lash line. Jack's comment had been bad, but he just completely shattered any confidence you had left for the day.

"Right," you muttered. "Of course it'd be that easy if Robby taught you."

And you'd be right. On the night shift, patients like that rarely if not ever needed such a complex procedure. You could only think to one time that a woman came through almost needing one before they were able to use a different method to get her stable enough to be transferred to the OR.

With keys clacking loudly, you quickly finished up the chart before turning the whole thing off. You didn't even try to find Jack before you left, choosing to slip out before he even noticed you'd left without saying goodbye.

Once you were home, you stormed past the fridge and went straight to yours and Jack's shared room. Your scrubs hit the floor, and you didn't even bother to put on pajamas. The bed dipped under your weight as you pulled the duvet up over your body in a sad attempt at being comforted by its weight.

Sleep came quickly, only being interrupted by the door opening, a signal that Jack had gotten home. Blearily, you listened to him walk around the room before his edge of the bed sunk after he sat. The familiar hiss and pop of his prosthesis preceded him turning to lie down. You kept still as he scooted closer before wrapping an arm around your middle and molding your back to his chest.

"Sorry if I woke you up," he muttered sleepily. "Tried to find you before you left, but I guess I missed you. Wanted to say good job for that trauma. You helped so much."

You clamped your eyes shut, squeezing a fresh round of tears that dripped down your cheeks to puddle on your pillowcase.

After Samira, you had done your best to convince yourself it had been a slip of his tongue. But now after Robby, you weren't too sure that Jack would keep you around for much longer before finding someone better. Because there was no way you could ever amount to someone like Robby.

It was impossible. I care, I care, I care, like ribbons in your hair, my stomach's all in knots, you got the one thing that I want. Ooh, I try, I try, I try, try to rationalize people are people, but it's like you're made of angel dust. You were trying but failing to pretend Jack's words and comparisons hadn't left a giant, bleeding gap in your heart. Before everything happened, you never ever wondered if Jack loved you. Except now, you waited with bated breath for him to just drop the bucket and break up with you. You walked on eggshells around him.

Don't panic. Be put together. Keep your heart to yourself. Be calm like Samira. Don't fuck up. Know how to do your job. Be confident like Robby.

Those thought became your mantra and lifeline. No one seemed to think twice about your recent personality change. They loved the way they could count on you, the way you had an answer ready for everything. To the day and night shift, you were the epitome of composure. But behind closed doors, you were falling apart and into a pit you didn't think you'd be able to climb out of.

Jack didn't help with that either. You guessed he didn't even know what he had done to you, going on with his life like he hadn't given yours so many potholes that you couldn't continue on without falling behind. Everything you did was carefully thought out, every patient you talked to met a version of you that didn't reflect what you felt inside or outside.

You avoided mirrors the most, their reflections showing you exactly what you weren't. You weren't Samira with her lovely thick hair and clear skin. And you weren't Robby who carried years of trauma like it was apart of his body.

You were you, and you loathed it entirely.

You hated the glances you caught between Jack and Samira across the department. You hated the way they looked like they knew what the other was thinking before they spoke. You hated how you felt like on onlooker to a relationship that wasn't even happening.

You also hated the way Robby changed from a mentor to an idol. He had soon morphed into someone you wanted to so desperately be to the point you lost yourself in ambition.

And the worst part? You held nothing against them personally.

They didn't know what Jack had said. They didn't know that you were dying on the inside every time they raised you up during shifts. Bits of you crumbled away while they continued to glow.

Every morning you woke up, you wondered if the day would provide the straw that broke the camel's back with the way you felt like a stretched out rubber band waiting to fly.

A soft, savory aroma wafted through your kitchen. You absentmindedly stirred the spatula through the sauce, eyes glancing back and forth from the pan to the recipe. The instructions were written in beautiful, slanted cursive with curled letters that danced together. You'd found the card mixed in with a bunch of recipes Jack kept in his drawer. With a quick read told you that the owner of this one was his late wife, and the heart next to the title had you guessing if this was a favorite for the two of them.

Without thinking, you plucked it from the drawer and started working. After a week of back to back cases that ended in more loss than wins, a homemade meal was exactly what you and Jack needed after a day off. He was currently out getting his truck washed, and you wanted to be finished by the time he came home.

Quickly, the separate parts of the recipe—the chicken and veggies basting in the oven, the sauce on the stove top, and the wine chilling in the fridge—all came together right as Jack walked through the door.

"Hi, baby!" you called out as you pulled the pan from the oven. "Dinner's almost ready!"

You picked up on Jack's slightly clompy gate as he got farther into the house.

"Smells good," he said, walking over to stand behind you. "What did you make?"

Suddenly, you got nervous. What if it didn't taste correct? What if Jack didn't want you to make something so special between him and his wife. What if you ruined everything.

You didn't meet his eyes and poured the sauce over the top of the chicken. "Uh, a recipe from the drawer. It looked good, and we already had the ingredients."

He grabbed the card and held it up to his face, and you held your breath. When he didn't seem to get angry or sad, you counted it at a win.

"There's a bottle of white in the fridge if you want to get it out," you offered.

Jack stayed quiet. You didn't dare look even as the sound of a cork popping echoed in the room. While his immediate lack of response didn't cause concern to rise, your stomach still churned. To mirror him, you also didn't speak while you set the table.

He sat down, and so did you, your chairs facing the other like you'd done so many times in the past. Your heart pounded against your sternum as he took the first bite.

Loudly, he smacked his lips, setting his fork down at he chewed. The noise felt like nails on a chalkboard in the silence.

After a minute, he finally spoke. "Did you change anything in this?"

Your racing heart plummeted to your feet. "No. I kept it just like the card had it."

His brows furrowed. "Really? It tastes different than how I remembered it last."

You dug your nails into the fabric of the table running. "Does it not taste good?"

Jack looked up from his plate with wide, hazel eyes. "No, no, it's just different."

"But not good," you scoffed.

"I'm just trying to say that maybe you missed something. I know Alice's handwriting isn't the easiest to read."

"I know how to read cursive, Jack," you spat lowly. "I followed every single instruction on the card. It's the exact same recipe."

"It's not that big of a deal, sweetheart," he tried. "Maybe if you had a bit more practice like her, it might have come out the same. You're a good cook, don't get me wrong, but—"

Your hands slammed on the table in frustration, causing Jack's eyebrows to pinch as his words died in his mouth. He went to keep talking but stopped when he noticed the frustrated tears fall from your eyes.

"I'm done," you breathed, eyes darting around the room.

"Done?" Jack echoed. "What are you done with?"

"Everything," you hissed. "I'm done with this—" You gestured to the food with a wave of your hand. "I'm done with-with you. I'm done with it all."

You pushed up from the table and walked away, leaving Jack to scramble out of his chair and follow you.

"Sweetheart, what's going on?" he loudly asked, but you ignored him.

By the time he made it into the bedroom, you had already ripped out a suitcase from the closet and were pushing clothes into it without making them neat.

"Hey," Jack said gently. "Look, I'm sorry for saying that. I didn't think it'd upset you this much, but you don't have to leave."

You paused in a mid-throw of your shirts and spun to face him. A disbelieving laugh bubbled wetly through your throat. "That's the problem," you muttered, "you don't think."

He crossed his arms, biceps resting against his chest. A need to defend himself bloomed in his stomach. "What's that supposed to fucking mean."

You threw your arms up with an exasperated scoff. "Oh, so now you're concerned for what I'm saying. Maybe you should be concerned more with your words." You sucked in a deep breath. "Just go on and say it."

Jack took a step forward. "Say what?"

"That you'd rather me be someone else!" you screamed. "That-that I'm not enough by myself for you anymore." Pants heaved in your chest. "I'm sick and tired of standing here stuck listening to you compare me and wish that I'd be like or act like someone else."

Your words stole the breath from Jack's lungs as confusion and dread washed over him. "What?"

You closed your eyes and dropped your shoulders. "I heard you; I keep hearing you."

In another step forward, Jack was within two feet of you. He swallowed thickly, but you beat him to more words.

"On the fourth," you began to explain through tears, "I saw Samira patch you up, and I heard the way you told her that I could learn how to be more level headed like her."

A chill crept up Jack's spine. "Sweetheart—"

"Don't," you ordered. "Don't do that where you try to make it all better. I heard you loud and clear, Jack. And that's fine. I knew I could be more calm during traumas, so that's exactly what I did, but apparently—" You chocked out a laugh. "That wasn't enough for you."

He shook his head, hazel eyes swimming with guilt already.

"And I really thought that if I could be anything like Samira, your words wouldn't hurt as much. But then you had to go and tell me that you wished Robby had been there instead of me to do a pericardiocentesis." Your breath shuddered in the next exhale. "Did you even know that was the first time I'd ever been asked to do one? And instead of teaching at a teaching hospital, you threw me to the side saying Robby—the fucking chief attending—could have done the job. No fucking duh, Jack."

You threw a hand in the direction of the kitchen. "And now this? I thought that maybe I could be like Samira or study enough to be like Robby, but h-how am I supposed to compare to the woman who had your love first." You turned back toward the bed and haphazardly packed suitcase. "That's unfair to me. So, like I said, I'm done."

A pleading sound ripped from Jack's throat at the sound of your suitcase zipper closing.

"No, sweetheart, please. Let me fix this; tell me how to fix this," he begged.

"That's just it, Jack. I don't think this can be fixed. I've spent weeks with your words in my head wondering how I can be the perfect person for you. And I don't know if I can keep going on pretending."

Jack's body shook under a small sob as everything came crashing down. He absolutely had no clue what he had done to you, but thinking back, he understood that his careless words wracked irreparable damage to you and your personality.

"I'm sorry," he managed, voice breaking in a whisper.

"I know you are,' you responded, "and somehow that makes it hurt worse. Because while you were trying to compliment everyone else, you made me feel inadequate in every aspect of my life." Your fingers wrapped around the suitcase handle and tugged it off the bed. "I can't stay with someone who keeps hoping I'll be a conglomeration of all the best parts of others; that's not me. And I'll be honest, I don't even really know who me is anymore."

He inhaled sharply, eyes tearing from your face to look down at the floor. "So this is it? You're leaving?"

Another round of tears spilled down your cheeks as you choked on a sob of your own. "I don't want to, but I need to."

"But I love you," he croaked, eyes coming back up to meet yours.

"You love the best parts of me, Jack," you said, already moving to walk past him. "And that's never going to be enough to make me stay."

Your shoulder lightly brushed by his as you walked out of the room and all the way out the front door, leaving Jack behind in a house he realized he didn't want empty. You poison every little thing that I do, Lacy, oh, Lacy, I just loathe you lately, and I despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell for you, yeah, I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you Jack didn't truly realize what he'd done until almost six months after you left him crying in his bedroom.

Your absence in his life gave him a lot to think about, and the only conclusion he could come up with was that you were absolutely right. It didn't matter if he'd compared you to others unconsciously; he made you feel like that: worthless, in need of self change, inadequate; the list went on.

He'd seen the small changes too late.

The next shift he worked with you, Jack tracked every minuscule thing you did, and it felt like one big punch to the gut. He saw the way you constantly checked your hair, ponytail pulled tight enough to give you a headache, skin, and scrubs and the way you straightened your stethoscope so it rested perfectly across your collarbones.

His stomach dropped when he watched you pause before a trauma and gulp down air before heading inside like someone who needed to take control before it could get out of hand. Before him, you weren't like that. Yes, you could be nervous to mess up, but you didn't act like you had to be the smartest person in the room.

He did that to you. He made you feel the need to change. And it killed him. It killed him once he learned you transferred over to a specialty in orthopedics, and his mind made him think you did it just to get away from him.

He was slightly correct, but not entirely.

You needed a fresh start, somewhere where you knew no on had any high expectation of you. And somehow, orthopedics gave you just that. And you thrived in the environment, only coming down to the Pitt when they needed a transfer or second opinion. Sure, you had to accompany Park the Shark more than you'd liked to, but through your time there, the old you was coming back, the one who worked through her panic instead of shutting it down, the one who only got frazzled when she cared about patients and their needs.

It was never weakness you showed, and you had to learn that all over again.

Someone helped you see that along the way as well.

"What do got here?" Park asked while snapping on a pair of gloves, eyes predatory as he walked into Trauma Room 1.

Jack looked up with pinched brows when he realized that you didn't walk in behind the larger man. "Where's Dr. [Name]?"

Park didn't even acknowledge his question. "For fucks sake man, you didn't even pack this right."

"You should know how to put a detached leg together even if I missed the pressure of the wrapping by an inch," Jack shot back.

"Abbot, you should know that I can't fucking put your patient back together after you decided to play Barbies. It's not as easy as popping a joint back in place."

"Dr. [Name] could do it."

Except for the monitors, everyone went quiet. Jack tore his eyes away from Park and looked back down at his blood soaked gloves. Reality crashed down on him as he realized he just did to Park what he'd done to you. Even if he knew he probably didn't hurt Park's feelings at all, it sucked to know that he was still so quit to throw out words like that.

Park's shoulders rose in a shrug. "She could, but she isn't here right now. She switched shifts and won't be in until 7." He smirked. "Think she said she had plans with someone."

An ugly roar of jealousy clawed at Jack's insides, nails sinking deep in his gut.

You were with someone?

He went through the motions of his shift, mind still on the fact that you weren't on call because someone had taken your time and attention away from the hospital. His knuckles turned white around the tablet he held while going through handoffs. He didn't know if his body was still trained to look for you, forever waiting for your soft lips against his, but Jack couldn't help but keep his head on a swivel and ears open to catch the sound of your voice.

Like a laugh in his face from the universe, your laugh fluttered through the ER, and his head whipped hard enough that his neck hurt in order to find you. When he finally saw you walking in, his heart dropped to his feet, because there you were, smiling brighter than he'd seen in a long while, hand enclasped with a man's.

Jack swallowed thickly. He instantly hated the way his blood boiled at the sight. He looked back down at the tablet after your voice seemed to draw closer to where he was standing.

"Andy," you sighed wistfully, "you didn't have to walk me all the way in here. I know you're weary of the germs."

"I know," the man—Andy (you gave him a fucking nickname?)—muttered back, wide, hazel eyes looking down at you like you hung the moon. "But I wanted to."

You pouted playfully. "You're so sweet. Am I going to see you tomorrow morning, or are you working again?"

He hummed. "My morning's yours if you want it."

"You know I always do."

Jack watched the corner of the man's mouth twitch into an almost-there smile, and he had to look away when his head started leaning in toward yours.

The small smack of your lips on his made bile gurgle in Jack's stomach.

"Okay, you gotta go save lives."

You giggled again. "I just put people back together, and technically, Park's the one doing all the procedures. You know my hands start shaking."

From the corner of his eye, Jack watched him lift your hands to his lips and kiss the tops of your knuckles.

"Just breathe and know that you alone can do this. You were the one to get into the program, so they want you, shaky hands and all."

Jack's heart clenched to the point of a physical reaction to the pain. He should have been the one saying that to you, standing in your corner and building you up one compliment at a time.

But now, he had to stand on the sideline and watch a man (someone who scarily looked a bit like him) give you all the praise and love you deserved. And while Jack could do everything in his power to let people know how good of a doctor you were, it wouldn't ever be the same, forever stuck loathing the moment he lost you without knowing.

Jack looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head as his hands went to rest on his hips. When he looked back down, he found you walking toward the nurse and it suddenly made complete sense. 

He let out a sigh. “This has to be a joke.”

His eyes, as they did more often than was appropriate, caught on you, hair coming down loose from where you’d pinned it, the scrubs lopsided at one hip, riding lower than where they’d started at the beginning of the night. You turned to say something to the guy quickly, and the movement caught the slip, your scrub top moving up half an inch, and Jack’s eyes went there before his brain could tell him that was wrong, some groove in him that noticed you before it noticed anything useful. He had a second of pure, unhelpful distraction before his brain reminded him that he was an attending and had things to do. 

“I actually think it’s funny,” Lena said, shrugging.

Of course it had something to do with you. He should’ve figured it out the second he saw the guy standing there with his hands in the pouch of his scrubs, rocking heel to toe like the floor was just too exciting to be standing on. Nobody loitered around the ambulance bay at midnight for good reason. People came through those doors bleeding or they didn’t come through them at all, and this guy had shown up with nothing wrong with him, except maybe a case for some lovesickness. 

“I’m gonna make this stop,” Jack said, already pushing himself away from the nurse’s station.

Lena’s eyes widened slightly. “Don’t say anything that gets you sat down with HR.”

“She can goddamn try me,” he said, and went. Also because Jack was fairly sure you would never report him to HR. 

He crossed the floor and caught the tail-end of your conversation as he closed in.

“ — just tell me when you’re free, that’s all I’m asking,” the guy was saying.

You were already half-turned, already gone as you waved a hand loosely beside you. “I don’t know, I just don’t think we should try again.” 

Jack blew out a breath, standing a few feet short of you, your back facing him. Why was he not surprised? He’d been keeping tally without meaning to, and he knew that was embarrassing. There was the radiology fellow who’d started hand-delivering films that very well could’ve gone through the system; the travel nurse who’d washed through in six weeks and left the floor faintly weird in his wake; the anaesthesia resident who now took the long way around the department if he saw you at the end of it, as though he were a dog who’d learned the fence was electric. And now this one, apparently, Peds with his whole hopeful heart hanging out in Jack’s department. 

“You’re so sweet for coming down here,” you practically crooned at him, shifting on your heels, eyes flicking down to the form in your hand. “But I really do have a whole long night ahead of me, and I know my answer’s not gonna change, so I won’t make you wait around for it, okay?” 

Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes when you said the words with the upward lilt of a woman sending a toddler back to his mother. He wanted to laugh a little when he saw that the guy had taken it standing up like it was a gift. 

The hell of it was that Jack understood the man. He understood every last one of them because he stood next to you fifty hours a week, had been doing so for three years, and whatever the department thought of him after his consistent therapy, he was not carved out of stone. 

Jack was afraid that if he hadn’t been your attending these last four years and a little younger, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he’d have been eating out of the palm of your hand. 

You gave the guy a there-there pat, and it was only then did his eyes land on Jack, who he probably knew was your fucking attending. You turned then, and immediately said, “Oh, Dr. Abbot, I’ve got the guy in six’s labs back, the potassium —”

“Mhm.” Jack’s hands came up and landed on your shoulders before you’d finished the sentence, squaring you off the spot where you stood and turning you bodily back toward the floor like you were a gurney. 

“It is four-point-nine, but the EKG’s good, so I was gonna recheck in —” 

“Let’s recheck it now,” he said. He kept you moving, his palms broad through the cotton of your scrubs, steering you a few feet till your own feet caught onto the idea. 

You grumbled something under your breath, and once he’d stopped you right in front of six, you turned to face him with your brows raised.

“Say something?” he asked, tipping his chin down.

“You seem like you’re mad at me,” you said. 

“Huh. I do?” He let go of your shoulders — noticing, distantly, the exact second his hands came off and suddenly felt too empty — and reached past you to pluck six’s chart off the tray, more to have something to do with them than needing it. “You’re right. You should recheck in ten minutes.”

“You’re mad at me,” you said again, crossing your arms over your chest. 

He blew out a breath, and suddenly felt just a little silly at getting worked up over a nurse by the doors when there was a large, glowing board behind him full of names that needed his complete, undivided attention. 

You were a senior resident, after all, four years deep, one of his sharpest — you’d treated the guy in six, hadn’t you, you’d flagged it and called for the EKG and made the right call on the recheck before he’d even asked, all while dismantling some man’s hopes. Somehow, your mess and competence ran on the same current. You never let the first touch the second. He’d have loved, some nights, to have an excuse to be mad — a missed lab, a blown line, anything he could write up and point at — and you kept declining to hand him one. All of this meant he was left with this vague swampy irritation, and Jack wasn’t the sort of mentor who liked to hound upon that. 

“No, sweetheart, I just love it when you get random men hanging around the department,” he settled on saying, feeling his shoulders visibly loosen a fraction.

You winced, eyes darting over to the emptiness in front of the doors now. “Sorry.” 

“You’d say it won’t happen again, but we both know better.” He shrugged. Then, he reached out his hand — he wasn’t sure why, except that it just happened naturally — and patted you once on the shoulder, then on the second turned you to face the curtains leading to your patient. “Doctor up.”

And you did, the loose, embarrassed shape of you being replaced in the space of a single breath, being replaced by something Jack had watched grow into you over the years and still hadn’t quite gotten used to. 

Trauma called it in nine minutes later, an MVC, unrestrained driver, GCS dropping in the field. Jack was working on a laceration in four when he heard the crackled warning, and by the time he’d looked up out the curtains, you were already moving, gowned and at the head of the bay calling out assignments like you’d been doing this for a decade.

“I need two units O-neg before he rolls in,” you said, voice pitched high enough to carry without yelling, cutting clean through the perpetual noise of the department. “Somebody get me a second eighteen-gauge ready, and I want an ultrasound in here.”

Donnie and Mateo were already moving, and so were the people around you, falling into your orbit like the room had easily reorganized itself around your voice the second it went up. Jack stood by the curtain, gloves from the lac still on, and found he couldn’t make himself move just yet.

The doors banged open. EMS wheeled the stretcher through fast, calling out vitals over each other, and you were already on the patient’s side before the gurney had fully stopped moving, hands moving on his neck, chest, eyes scanning his pupils in a matter of ten seconds. He began walking over, catching your voice as you called out your reads as someone hung the blood and someone else prepped the ultrasound wand. “Page neuro now.”

“On it,” Mateo said, already moving.

You had both hands on the patient, running the primary survey quickly, confirming, checking, discarding possibilities out in short, clipped sentences Jack recognized as the sound of your brain running six steps ahead of your mouth. Sweat had started on your hairline. You called out for OR to be on standby, eyes flickering around the room and landing on Jack. “OR, please,” you said, aimed at him, brows going up. 

“On it,” Jack said, because there was no way he was going to let you be wrong about needing something and didn’t make sure you got it.

The next six minutes went by fast and loud, in bursts and then suddenly quiet, the room narrowing down on functionality. You stood at the center of it; you called it and ran it. You got the man upstairs stable enough that Walsh didn’t sound worried for one second, and that was a compliment from her. 

Jack watched the whole thing from four feet back, arms crossed, and chipping in when your brain had snagged. He was feeling a heat in his chest helplessly and entirely unprofessional, it was always present when he was able to see, in real-time, how far you’d come from your first day of residency when your hands were a second too slow on the central line and how your voice would pitch up at the end of every read, asking for permission every time instead of stating it like a fact, eyes finding him across the room each time, checking.

There was none of that left in you now, he realized, had done so a long time ago. He thought, watching you now, that this was the closest thing he’d let himself do to falling in years, standing uselessly riveted as he watched a woman he’d taught outgrow the need for him in real time, and finding that instead of the loss he’d expected to feel when the day finally came, all he felt was warm and terrifying and too much like pride. 

When the room had started clearing out, he watched your mouth drop open as you let out a heavy breath, eyes going over to him. The second he watched you realize he was still there, your face shifted, the relief turning into something sharper. 

“Why didn’t you jump in?” You crossed the floor toward him in four hard strides, gloves already peeled off and balled tight in one fist, snapping the second one free with a motion that looked terrifyingly like it wanted to be aimed at him. “His pressure tanked for thirty seconds and you just watched.”

“You had it.”

“You didn’t know that,” you said, voice going up an octave, adrenaline still thrumming through you, hands coming up the gesture at the blood-streaked floor. “I could’ve missed something. You’re the attending, Jack, you’re supposed to catch if I missed something —”

“I would’ve,” he interrupted, stepping in close enough that you had to tilt your head back to keep glaring at him properly. “The second you needed me, I would’ve stepped in. I wasn’t gonna take it from you before you did.” 

“You can’t gamble like that with a patient —” Your chest was rising and falling fast, gloves now crushed in your fist, and he could see the fear catching up now that everything around you had gone quiet enough to let it, something that looked more like fear of yourself than for the patient. “What if I’d frozen —?”

“I knew you wouldn’t.” He reached his hand out, thumb catching a smear of the blood at your jaw you’d accidentally smeared on yourself, wiping it off carefully with the pad of his thumb, and felt you go still under it. “You don’t trust my judgement?”

“You know I do. You just could’ve said something.”

“I could’ve. He dropped his hand from your jaw only to catch your wrist instead. “Didn’t wanna interrupt you being brilliant. Kinda liked watching it happen.”

Your mouth opened, surely to let out some unnecessary retort, and died there when he pressed one slow stroke of his thumb against your wrist, raising a brow. 

“Relax,” he said, voice going rough as he leaned in a little, forcing you to meet his eyes properly. “Just take the win. That’s an order.”

“Now you wanna give orders,” you mumbled.

He barked out a short laugh, letting go of your wrist. “Only when you’re being stubborn for no reason.”   

It was sometime during the second year of your residency when he’d started catching your drift. It had started with a random Friday shift. He’d seen you at the station, elbows on the counter, telling Lena something conspiratorially. Jack was meant to be reading a chart but couldn’t help how his ears had perked up. Anything to get through the shift, he supposed.

“ — no, but he was perfect on paper,” you were saying, “kept his house clean and everything. He told me he kept his plant alive for six years —”

“So, what happened?” Lena said flatly, like she already knew what you were going to say but wanted to hear anyway. 

“He wanted to take me bowling on the second date,” you said through a sigh. “I know how it sounds, but you’ve gotta hear me out —”

“I’m genuinely not going anywhere.”

“ — for the first date, bowling’s fun. But he took me to a nice dinner the first time, he set a standard, and then the second date he goes bowling, which means the effort’s already —” You created a little downward slope with your hand. “And if it’s already sliding on date two, where’s it at on date two hundred? I can already see my marriage with him and it’s bad.”

It seemed you had a criteria, Jack learned then. It was proven even more when he’d heard you talk about your other failed dates, seen them, and learned — without ever wanting to — what they were, to an extent. 

He knew you couldn’t stand a man who ordered for you without asking. He knew you’d written off a fellow for the way he talked about his mother, and another one — an accountant, a rare specimen who had no clue what an EKG was — over a text message you’d read aloud to Ellis in a voice of complete horror, though Jack had never caught what it actually said, only your face while you read it. He knew you gave people precisely three dates, that this was a rule you held if the first and second date went well, three apparently being the magic number at which a person could no longer hide the demon they were going to turn out to be (your words).

He knew, too, that you only allowed one kiss after the first date, if even that. It was never up for negotiation, no matter how beautifully the night had gone, for you never wanted to end up “emotionally overdrawn on an account you hadn’t even opened yet.”

He knew you a man lost real points if, over the three dates, if it involved drinks, he ordered the same one. He knew a man gained them, silently and instantly, for being able to sit in a lull without narrating his way out of it, and that you considered this the single rarest trait in modern dating.

He knew you were looking for something you had no name for and would recognize on sight, which struck him as a hell of a way to run a search.

He’d have told you, if you asked, that he tuned most of the station chatter out as a matter of survival, for while he enjoyed the occasional gossip, he couldn’t very well absorb everyone’s business. And that was true about everyone’s business but yours, apparently, because yours came in clear.

Your business he retained against his own better judgement, and he realized — once, during a slow shift — that he could’ve drawn you a better map of your taste than you seemed to carry yourself. He could’ve told you, if you asked, exactly the kind of man who’d finally clear your bar, and exactly why he had yet to show up. 

It was almost nice, some nights, watching you try anyway. The ER was a place where everyone was kept tethered to the world by a thread, and everyone who worked in it long enough to develop some version of the same calluses. Jack had grown his years ago, and he wore them invisible, occasionally aching, and had come to terms with it being permanent.

Love, for Jack, had stopped being a real noun before you’d shown up, somewhere between things he used to want and things he’d decided weren’t for him anymore.

You still believed in it. You’d watched this place take everything soft out of grown men twice your seniority and somehow walked through the same fire hopeful, still convinced, against every scrap of evidence, that somewhere there was a person worth all that hoping.

For that reason, he had decided to not interrupt your endeavors, not until now, when he noticed you during hand-off before your night shift with him started, in front of Robby, of all people. 

While Jack loved Robby like a brother, he had a documented, department-wide, actuarially reliable seven-week expiration date on every woman he charmed out of this building. He’d heard intra-departmental gossip about him. There was, Jack was fairly sure, a running joke about it that predated your residency by years. 

He knew you definitely were not finding love in his best friend. But Jack felt the buzzing in his mind go quiet and mean watching how you with him.

You laughed at something and Jack lost, for one humiliating second, the thread of what he’d walked over to say. It happened sometimes, more than he’d admit to anyone. Ordinary noises out of you hit him somewhere in his chest before the better part of him flagged it as a problem, and he had to physically clear his throat before finding his footing again. 

“ — Italian’s always good after pulling a double,” Robby was saying. “But I do love some microwave ramen, too, when I’m missing my med student days.” 

“Oh, so your standards have been raised being chief?” you said, and Jack could hear the smile and wariness in it. 

“For sure —”

Jack let out a huff, something resembling a laugh, as his feet planted him between the two of you. He was close enough that his shoulder nudged yours and you had to step back to keep your balance. He felt your weight land for a second against him with a satisfaction he had no, absolutely no business feeling for something so small. So childish.

He turned to Robby, spreading his hands wide, mock outrage. “My resident.”

Robby looked mildly amused, unbothered, so Jack added, before he could respond, “Go home before I report you to HR.”

“You’d do that to me?” 

“In a heartbeat. Have some shame.” Jack kept his shoulder where it was still angled half in front of you, an old, unexamined instinct keeping the line drawn even though Robby had already backed off.

He tipped his head toward the doors, toward the gold light coming up in them, the day shift draining out around you both. “There’s a whole rich life waitin’ for you out there.”

Robby just smiled and pushed off the counter, giving you a small wave before he left.

Jack turned to you then, brows furrowed. “Seriously?”

You let out a short laugh. “Work hard, play hard?” 

“Soundin’ a lot like a frat brother right now. Never have those words been said in an ER,” Jack said. 

“I wasn’t actually going to do it,” you said, rushing the words out with something more honest in them. “For the record. I know what — he’s got a reputation.” You picked at the counter. “I was just talking to him. He’s funny.”

Jack had to recalibrate for a second. “You were talkin’ sweet to him.” 

“I talk sweet to everyone.” You lifted a shoulder, completely unbothered. “You should try it sometime.”

He rolled his eyes at that. He reached over for your cup of coffee sitting between you — closer to his elbow than yours — and drank a sip, eyes going up to the ceiling at the sheer volume of syrup you’d decided you needed in your bloodstream today. “The hell?” he muttered, turning the cup slightly as if that would help. “Are you trying to embalm yourself?”

“Give it back.”

“In a minute.” He took a second sip, slower this time, and watched you over the rim of the cup. Then, he set it back a few degrees off how you’d had it, just to see your jaw tick.

You pulled the cup back in, thumbed it around until the lid faced you again, and drank from it without breaking your explanation. “I’m offended you think I’ll get wine and dined by the chief attending.” You tilted your head. “Give me some credit here. I won’t be his seven weeks.”

“Huh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was warm. “Well, good. Don’t think he’ll clear your bar anyway.”

“See, you get it,” you said, pointing a finger at him. “At least someone around here does.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his head slightly forward that even he hadn’t realized that he had shifted the distance just slightly. “Better than most.”

Your eyes widened slightly at that, and Jack took that as his cue to step back, clear his throat, as he jerked his chin toward the board.

“Alright, time to work. Stop the play,” he said, trying to get his voice the right level. “Go look at chest pain on three.”

“So bossy,” you said, but you were already turning around to go to three.

Well, that’s what he was, wasn’t he? For some reason, he had to remind himself that. 

It was what he had to remind himself as his hands hovered your trembling ones as you tried to pump air into Mrs. Foley’s lungs, knowing she was already gone — had been for a while now, if he was honest — longer than it took you to admit. He knew it, he’d grown the grim ability to recognize when a body stopped being a patient and being someone you were performing compressions on for the family’s sake, for your own need to have done everything. 

He’d let it run anyway, because you hadn’t accepted it yet, and he’d wanted to give you that extra minute to arrive at it on your own. 

Mateo had come up to Jack’s side, snapping his gloves off, the sound of it overshadowed by your own heaving. 

“She has to call it,” he murmured. “You want me to —”

“No.” Jack’s eyes, he felt, could not move away from your distress. “I’ve got her.” 

Mateo looked at him for a moment longer than the moment warranted, and then he stepped back and let Jack be. You were still going, your compressions had gone harder, faster, less like genuine medicine and more like you were pleading with Mrs. Foley herself now. Sweat had gone to the hair at your temple. Your jaw was set in a clench Jack recognized all too well, and for a moment, Jack wished that he didn’t have to be so acutely tuned into watching what the job did to others, the same way it did to him. 

He stepped in behind your shoulder, close, and brought his hand down over yours where they were locked on the old woman’s chest.

“Look at the clock,” he said quietly into your ear.

“One more round —” 

“You’ve done plenty.” He pressed, gently, until your hands stilled under his, and felt your entire body resist it. “You know she was gone before we could’ve even done anything —”

“She’s been my patient for years —” 

Jack knew then that while you may have been an excellent doctor, his senior resident that had bloomed under his mentorship but still could’ve gone without him and done just the same, it wasn’t a good feeling to wonder if the job would dim you the way it had him. 

“I know.” He kept his hands over yours with enough pressure so as to not let you drive them down again. “That’s why it’s yours to call. But you’ve gotta call it, Doctor.”

Your breath hitched as you turned your neck to face him, and there was a pool brimming on your lashline that you kept at bay, nodding. Your hands under his stopped straining upward, and he felt the exact second you accepted it, for it moved through your shoulders and down your spine and left you a little smaller standing there, the fight trickling into the moment after, which Jack always thought was worse. 

“Time of death,” you said, forcing your voice back into the procedural tone, “oh-three-forty-one.” You peeled your gloves off finger-by-finger.

His hand found the small of your back after taking the minute, leading you to the little family consult room with the boxed tissues and fake ficus with a couch that had absorbed more bad news since longer than you or he had worked there. He shut the door with the flat of his hand and let the floor’s noise cut to a hum through the drywall. 

You stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed, holding yourself, and stayed silent. 

Jack propped himself against the table, arms folded, as he breathed out a small sigh through his nose. He knew you weren’t a talker after the bad ones. Some residents came out of a loss with their mouths running, narrating it into something survivable, and some went quiet and small and had to be waited out, and you were the second kind. So he waited.

You broke it eventually, like he always knew you would have. “I’ve got a butterscotch she gave me seven months ago in my locker still,” you murmured, craning your neck so you were looking at the ceiling. You wiped under your eyes with the heel of your hand roughly. 

“Think I’ve got one, too,” he murmured, wincing as he tried to shift his weight. 

It had been building up for the past few hours, a hot ring of wrong down below the knee where the socket had gone slick and furnace-warm because it was past hour fourteen, when he’d sweated the fit and never changed the liner because there’d been no window that wasn’t already accounted for. He shifted his weight off it, trying again, and reached down to thumb the release, breaking the seal. 

He let out a short, punched out sigh as he pulled himself down onto the chair behind him, one hand balancing himself on the table. “Sorry,” he gruffed out, jaw clenching. 

Your eyes flickered down to the prosthetic limb he was balancing against the pole of the table and you were already moving before he could finish apologizing. You never asked if he needed a hand. You’d learned sometime during your second year that asking him gave him a chance to say no, and you’d quit handing him that chance sometime during your second year, so now you just came. You went down on one knee at the pole of the table.

“Don’t say sorry,” you mumbled, eyes not meeting him.

His jaw stayed tight and he didn’t fight it, fight you. That was a formality and you both knew it, a thing he did with his shoulders and not his hands, but he watched the top of your head and thought — like he always did, each time, and never said out loud — there was no one else on god’s green earth he’d let do this in the way you did. Not the prosthetist, who did it clinically. Not the VA, who did it tired. You did it each time like it was nothing and everything at once, as though this something not worth remarking on. 

He very badly wanted to thank you, despite how small he always felt when you did this. He wanted to tell you that you were, without question, better at this than anyone who was paid to do it.

Your fingers found the socket and went for the liner because you knew the fit went bad and the sweat before it went bad anywhere a person could see, knew he’d have to run it slick and furnace-hot than spend the fourteen minutes off the floor. You rolled it back with the flat of your thumb, easing the trapped heat out of it, and he felt the pressure of the ring of raw below his knee and had to clench his jaw to not let the relief show on his face. You spared him anyway by keeping your eyes down where they’d been.

“You’ll strip your skin doing this,” you said conversationally, the roughness still present in your voice from the code. “You know that. You keep running it past twelve and one of these nights it’s cellulitis and I’m admitting you.” 

“If only I could be so lucky.”

He ducked his head slightly, a part of him wanting to catch the reaction, and he saw how one corner of your lip was barely turned up. 

You thumbed a line of red where the socket’s edge had bitten in, checking it, and your touch went careful around there. “This is new. The edge is catching higher than it was.”

“Went to a new liner last month,” he said, voice low. “Not broke in yet.” 

“Then you break it on your days off. Not on a fourteen hour.” You finally looked up at him, shaking your head with this flat, fond expression he’d come to realize was your favorite way to look at him. “You’d write me up for less.” 

“I’d write you up for a lot less,” he agreed, thinking back on the time you’d fought him tooth-and-nail over staying through a migraine, refusing, point-blank, to hand off a soft rule-out chest pain at eleven when the migraine had started very visibly began creeping up on you. 

He’d caught you before you’d said a word about it because you’d begun squinting at the numbers and pressed the heel of your hand against one eye for a moment too long between patients, thinking nobody was watching. He was, he realized, always watching you in some way.

“Go home,” he’d said quietly, catching you by the elbow outside the curtain. “That’s not a request.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve got a migraine.”

“I’ve got a job.” Your jaw had clenched, stubbornly, and Jack had thought that even if he’d put all his strength into it, he wouldn’t have been able to unclench it for you. “I’m not handing off a chest pain because my head hurts. This guy has waited long enough for a bed. I’m not the priority here.”

He’d wanted to tell you that you were, actually, that you were exactly the priority, and watching you white-knuckle forms with your pupils blown different sizes from pain scared him more than any board full of critical pains ever had. But he’d just pulled down the light two notches, told the nurses to shadow eleven’s discharge, and put a bottle of water and two Tylenol on your desk without a word. And thank god, you’d taken the Tylenol and finished the shift standing up because sitting made the room tilt worse, and only taken on non-critical cases. You’d refused until the end that you should’ve gone home three hours earlier.  

Now, you huffed something that was nearly a laugh, your first real once since the code, and went back to setting. And Jack sat there with his arms crossed in the dark with your hands on the worst-guarded part of him and the door shut against the whole floor, and thought about how he believed nobody deserved you. People were vile and sucked and cut in line and let doors swing shut behind them, and you handed out three dates to men who wrote sonnets in your voicemail and couldn’t clear a bar you’d never once lowered for anyone. He’d thought, more nights than he liked to admit, that these people had no idea what they were auditioning for. 

His eyes snagged on you because there was nothing else in this small room worth looking at. There was still salt dried in your lashline from the code. You were a wreck and you were fixing his leg anyway, still half-shaking from a woman you couldn’t save, and it hadn’t occurred to you to stop and put yourself back together first. It never did. Jack had seen the care run out of you before you ever decided to spend it. 

“I’m sorry about Mrs. Foley,” he said.

You shook your head, face still angled down, thumb pausing mid-motion. “I’ll be okay,” you murmured, lifting up one shoulder. “I just hate that she couldn’t get here sooner.”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said plainly. “Family said she’s been feeling off for two days now.”

“I know.” Your voice cracked, betraying the flatness you were trying to present. “Doesn’t make it easier.”

You lifted your head for a moment, then, looking at him with a sad smile he knew you were painting on to get him to stop talking.

He nodded stiffly, tipping his chin down. “Alright. Finish my leg and we’ll run this floor together.”

Up in radiology a few nights later, Jack had gone himself to sort out a reading that had been sitting long and he’d cornered a tech and got what he needed and was already halfway out the door, jacket sleeves still rolled from the last set of compressions, when he saw the guy standing off by the light boxes. 

Younger. A resident, he supposed, in scrubs a size too crisp for someone who’d actually been on the shift long enough to earn wrinkles in them. He’d been watching Jack the whole time — Jack could feel it, the itch of being observed — shifting his weight heel to toe against the linoleum floor. 

“Somethin’ on my face?” Jack said flatly because he really did have to get back to the floor.

“You’re — sorry, you’re Dr. Abbot, right?”

“Last I checked.” 

The guy’s hand came out of his jacket’s pocket, and there was a piece of folded paper in it. Jack looked at it like it was a spider, hoping — no, praying — it had something to do with work.

“Could you give this to her?” the guy asked, and Jack’s hope died, as he stepped closer. “The senior resident on your shift. She’ll — she’ll know who it’s from.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack murmured, brows pulling in together. “You ever heard of texting, kid?” 

“I did,” he said, and Jack could practically feel the heat radiating off of him. “She stopped answering, so I figured, maybe on paper, she’d actually —”

“Take the hint,” Jack grumbled, snatching the paper out of his hand. Then, as he turned to the door, he said, “You know I work in the ER?” When the guy only nodded quickly, he added, “You know she works in the ER?” 

“I — yeah. Obviously.”

“Then you know she doesn’t need this.” He held up the paper between him and the guy. “She’s got enough on her plate without some guy too chicken to call her handing me a note like I’m her mailman.”

The guy opened his mouth, nose scrunching at Jack’s words, but nothing came out. 

“Yeah.” Jack was already walking, note tucked in his pocket, done with the conversation. “Try calling next time. Or don’t.” 

The guy looked at least a little sheepish, a little ashamed, and Jack thought good, he should feel ashamed. He wasn’t sure what the protocol in dating was now — he’d been just a little rusty and out of the stretch for a stretch of years he preferred not to count in single digits — but he was fairly certain that whatever the rules had curdled up to, this could not possibly be inside them.

He rode the elevator down with the note in his pockets, and he could feel the small stiff square of another man’s hope pressing over the outside of his thigh. 

He found you at your desk, hands running restlessly through your hair as you spoke into the microphone, charting. The words were coming out of you bluntly, mechanic and after saying the same variation a thousand times over. There was a pen behind your ear you’d forgotten about and the residue of a lab value gone blue across the back of your hand where you’d scrawled it hours ago and never washed off.

He stood there for a second before you noticed him, and thought — not for the first time and with the same low irritation he always felt about it — that he had no earthly business being the man this got routed to.

Jack leaned down so his head hovered beside yours, scanning your work on the screen, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, head tilted to read your screen at an angle that had nothing to do with actually needing to see it. 

“The man wants an espresso martini?” he asked, furrowing his brows as he read over your notes, right by your ear. 

You jumped just slightly and swivelled on your stool to face him, then back at the screen. “Shit — Jack. Announce yourself.” You scanned the words on your notes, shaking your head and already backspacing. “No, that was me talking to myself. Stupid mic picked it up.”

“Long as it’s just the one,” he drawled, staying there in your space a little longer, watching the side of your face instead of the screen now. “Those things sneak up on you.”

“Speaking from experience?” You turned on your stool to face him fully, chin tilting up to meet his eyes, something playful and a little challenging in it. 

“I’ve got a couple decades on you. Everything’s snuck up on me.” 

You held his gaze a little longer, then looked away first, tongue coming out over your lips for a second. He took a small satisfaction in not being the one who blinked first. 

He blew out a breath through his nose, remembering, with reluctance now, what he’d actually come here to do. “Speaking of sneaking up.” He pulled out the note from his pocket. “I got something to deliver to you —”

You furrowed your brows when he handed it to you. “Secret admirer?” you asked jokingly. 

He barked out a short laugh. “Nothin’ secret about it. You ignoring some radiology fellow?”

You grimaced, opening the note and scanning over the words quickly. He could’ve left, but stayed instead and watched you read it. The frown only pulled deeper, and he saw your eye twitch once as you scanned the words.

Against his better judgement, he murmured, “That bad?” 

“Uh — no, it’s okay.” You shrugged stiffly. 

“Huh,” he breathed out, studying you outright now. “Wonder what you’re doin’ to these guys to get them so wound up.”

You chuckled, mostly to yourself. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”  

His chest tightened at that. It was unfair how you could make anything to him sound like something he’d been waiting to hear. He swallowed. “Suppose I would.”

“That an offer, Dr. Abbot?” 

“Might be,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. 

You laughed — surprised, the tension in your shoulders breaking slightly — and shook your head, folding the note back up. “You’re ridiculous. Well, thank you for getting it to me. I’m sorry he bothered you with this —” You swivelled, placing the note on your desk before picking up your phone. “That’s really weird.” 

“That’s one word for it,” Jack said, and left it there, because you’d already turned and had your phone in one hand and the microphone in the other. The small furrow was back between your brows, and he’d learned there was a point past which pushing you got him a brighter, smaller version of whatever you were covering. 

He drifted toward the far end of the station where Mateo was crouched at the crash cart running his palm along the drawers, checking seals, restocking and checking the fact of it on slower nights like this. 

“She okay?” Mateo asked, snapping the drawer, seemingly having caught the interaction. 

“Oh, you know.” Jack leaned a shoulder into the wall, arms crossing. “The belle of our ball. Can’t clock in without collecting a proposal.”

Mateo huffed. “She loves love.”

“That she does.” Jack watched you across the station, the phone lit against your ear now. “Don’t know why she keeps doing that to herself, though.”

“She’s an optimist.” Mateo clicked a seal into place, then moved down the cart. “Thinks someone’s gonna turn out different.”

Jack hummed, then, because the question had been sitting low and unlovely for a couple hours, he asked, “You two give it a run ever?” 

Mateo turned his neck to look up at Jack. “Me and —” He jutted his thumb behind him to vaguely gesture at you. “Her?”

“Mhm.” Jack kept his eyes on you. “You’re close.”

“Nah.” Mateo went back to the cart, shaking his head as he chuckled softly. “I don’t think I’d pass a single one of her tests. Besides, I got my eye on someone.”

“Apparently I don’t make the list either, I guess,” Jack murmured.

Mateo laughed through his nose, eyeing Jack with something new now. “You want to?” 

Jack caught it, reaching his palm and smacking it against Mateo’s curls with no force. “No. Now, do your job.”

“I am —” He laughed through the words, eyes scanning over Jack’s stiffened posture now. “It’s good you don’t, then. Couldn’t handle her anyway.” 

“Sure, I could,” Jack said immediately. 

Mateo’s head turned again, lips curving upwards at Jack’s words, and he felt momentarily blindsided by his own mouth, entirely too honest for something that had started as a joke. 

“Sure, you could,” Mateo teased, drawing out the words.

“Shut it.” Jack grabbed a box of gloves off the cart and set it down two shelves lower than it needed to go, purely to do something with his hands that didn’t involve reaching for Mateo’s collar. “Wasn’t a real question.”

Couldn’t handle you? As if he didn’t know, without having to think about it, that you took the stairs two at a time instead of the elevator when you were annoyed and needed somewhere to put your extra energy, or that you’d started drinking your coffee black on nights a patient reminded you of someone, syrup and cream abandoned, like sweetness felt wrong to have that shift. As if he hadn’t noticed, months ago, that you hummed the same four off-key notes from a jingle neither you nor Jack could place when a chart was boring you to death, or that you double-checked every single IV line now, ever since one bad mistake in your first year. He could very well handle you, he simply hadn’t been given the chance to do so.

Most of the time, Jack was fine with watching your love life play out in 3D. More often than not, he knew they’d never work out. You were just too good for anyone who came sniffing, and there was a grim comfort in that, in knowing the fellows and the nurses would wash through and out and leave you exactly where he found you, three feet down the counter from him, close enough to keep.

Tonight the comfort wasn’t coming. Mateo’s accidental interrogation had rubbed Jack wrongly, somewhere he had yet to fully locate yet, and was sitting in his chest like a splinter he kept forgetting was there until he turned the corner over the night, saw you, and noticed it was there. He should’ve let it stay as nothing, but his brain had apparently decided three hours later was the correct time to relitigate the whole exchange, turning it over at odd intervals between patients like a tongue worrying a chipped tooth.

It was the bad sort of slow in the ER, the sort that let his brain fill up with things he’d have no time for on a real night. Ellis had wandered over to your desk with two energy drinks and placed her arms loosely beside your computer.

Jack was distantly aware he had misplaced labs to hand back to you because they’d gotten lost in the system, and he told himself that was the whole reason his body had started moving in your direction. 

“I got a rundown from Marge,” Ellis said, dropping into an empty stool beside you. “Apparently he wrote it out of the OR.”

“You’re joking,” you muttered. “I don’t understand it.” 

Jack stood there with the labs in his hand, close enough to hear it. 

“I’m still wondering if I should respond,” you were saying, half into your hands. “Is this romantic? This one’s never happened before.”

Ellis laughed slightly with you, and the two of you had built one of those small pockets that slow nights sometimes allowed, thirty seconds of being people instead of clinicians.

Jack set the labs down at the edge of your keyboard harder than he meant to, the papers slapping flat against the desk, and both of you looked up at him like he’d grown two heads. Fuck — had he? It sure felt like he was operating off of whatever chemical cocktail his brain had whipped up for nights like this, some ugly little compound of jealousy and exhaustion. He was fairly sure if you pulled his labs right now they’d look like a man in the middle of a bad reaction to something not yet figured out in the scientific world. 

“Labs on eight got lost.” His palm stayed on the sheet for a few seconds too long, some instinct telling him to keep his hand on something solid before the rest of him did something stupid. “You’ll want to recheck the trop.” 

His eyes cut, against every ounce of better judgement he had left, to the note still folded in your hand, the same one he’d carried down like it was radioactive, the same note that had clearly done something for you that four years of Jack standing next to you clearly hadn’t. An unreasonable, low feeling creeped up behind his ribs at the sight of it, hot and out of proportion to a piece of folded-fucking-paper. 

Ellis’s smile went uncertain as he felt her gaze snag on him. 

You blinked up at him, and whatever had been sitting easy in your face a second ago curdled itself away, the corners of your mouth retreating. He knew this same retreat, had watched you recalibrate your muscles, swiftly, built to be unreadable against anyone who hadn’t spent four years learning your face. 

His stomach dropped and heat climbed up the back of his neck, jaw tightening on its own. He hated that his body had learned to answer you the way it answered a motor alarm. He hated more that some raw, cornered part in him — still smarting about Mateo’s offhand comment and sore from that folded note — felt it wasn’t soothed.

You blinked up at him, and the laugh faded off your face, and you said, easily, warm, “Yeah — course. I’ll get right on that.”

He shrugged up one shoulder, lips pressing into a thin line. He turned, already walking away. “Whenever there’s a gap on your social calendar, I guess.”

He heard the small silence that opened behind him, and he could practically imagine you and Ellis looking at each other. Then, he heard you push back from the desk, the stool wheels catching, and your footsteps coming after him like he’d known they would, because you were the last person to let something like that go. 

“Hey.” You fell into step beside him, voice pitched low, still giving him more benefit than the doubt had earned in the last ten seconds. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.” He tilted his neck up slightly to do a quick scan of the board, some stubborn muscle in his neck refusing to let him meet your eyes. “Got a department to run.”

“And you’ve been running it great. You just became weird right now.” He could feel you working it over beside him, shifting on your feet as you toed the line between resident and the hard-won territory neither of you had ever named. “Jack.” 

“You want to laugh about your shitty dates, that’s your business,” he said instead of letting it go, sounding too far from the man who’d had his hands hovering over yours an hour ago, watching you put in a chest tube, telling you that you’d done well. “Do it a little quieter. This is an ER, not a lunch table.”

His words stopped you for half a step. Jack kept walking, an ugly, cowardly momentum carrying him three more steps before you caught back up.

He heard you recalibrate your voice in real time when you said, “I was charting on a slow shift,” carefully. “You’ve made worse jokes when it’s even more busy. What’s this about?”

“It’s about you treating this place like it’s your dating pool and not your place of work.” The words came out much uglier than he meant, and he didn’t have it in him to call them back. “It’s not professional. It reflects on the department. Reflects on me. Somebody’s gotta say it, and apparently that’s me, since you clearly enjoy it too much to stop.” 

You stopped walking altogether this time. He turned to face your stillness whole, then, and found your eyes narrowed at him, looking like you’d been hit from a direction you hadn’t been completely guarding against. 

He let out a breath, fingers going up to his forehead to wipe at sweat that wasn’t there. “I’m just saying what —”

“I’m sorry,” you said, voice going level and courteous, as you nodded quickly. “You’re right. You’re my attending, it reflects on you. I’ll keep my personal life out of work.” 

“That’s not —” he tried, but you were already turning away, shoulders squared and chin level, professional armor snapping into place just like he’d told you to. It should have made him feel better to watch you take it so cleanly, to not make a big deal out of it. All it made him feel was like something had been surgically removed from him. 

“Stop —” he tried again, to your back now, and the sentence died somewhere between his teeth and the air. That was okay. There was no end to the sentence that didn’t sound worse than the beginning anyway. 

He blew out a sharp breath through his nose, standing in the middle of the floor with his hand still half-raised toward you, fingers curling back into his palm when he realized you weren’t there to reach. Jack felt, distantly, uselessly, like the only thing standing still in the entire building. 

“Great going,” he heard Lena say, trailing past him, a tray tucked against her hip, not even breaking stride. “You got rid of the one entertainment we’ve got around here.”

His shoulders stiffened, and he caught up with her in three steps, jaw working around words that wanted to spill out defensively and came out simply tired. “It’s not entertainment if she keeps getting hurt,” he grumbled. “She’s not a show. Stop treating her like one.” 

“Didn’t look like she was the one getting hurt tonight,” she said, rounding a corner and leaving him standing there.

Jack let out a low groan, running a palm down the lower half of his face, and dropped his hand only when he’d scrubbed enough friction into his jaw to feel it sting a little, which was at least a sensation he’d chosen, at least tonight. He stood there a second longer, staring at nothing in particular. His hands found his hips on reflex. 

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and dragged both hands back through his hair, gripping once at the roots before letting go. 

He rolled his neck, felt it pop unsatisfyingly, and pushed off the wall he hadn’t even realized he was leaning against. His leg fucking ached, the burn starting behind his knee. He ignored it like he always did and started walking anyway, jaw still held tight, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he could physically hold himself together with the seams of his own black scrubs.

It was by the lockers after hand-off that Jack saw you next. Both of you had conveniently managed to work over-time; he because there was nothing to get home to, and you — he’d heard through the grapevine — because one of your patient’s little sister was coming in toward close, and you simply wanted to talk with her instead of handing the situation off to one of the day residents.

Usually, nobody had asked you to stay when you did. Most times, there was no version of staying that showed up in your favor; he and Shen were gone, so there was no attending grading you on it; no hours that counted. It was just for a kid who was going to get bad news from a face she’d seen before, so you cost yourself hours of sleep you most definitely needed to be the soft spot for a stranger’s little sister, and hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, and he knew you would’ve been embarrassed if he brought it up. 

He found you using the little mirror inside your locker to apply some kind of pink-tubed gloss with one hand while the other ran its fingers through your hair. Jack pursed his lips, eyeing you from the doorway, because he was pretty sure you’d done something different to it in the last ten minutes. 

“Look nice,” he tried, biting the bullet and walking toward his own locker. “Goin’ somewhere?” 

You caught his eyes in the mirror instead of turning around. “Just breakfast,” you said, and there was none of the earlier lilt in it, the warmth that you’d always aimed at him gone functional. You capped the gloss with more force than it needed and dropped it into your bag. 

Jack stood there a second too long with his hand over his own locker without opening it. He’d expected — and he knew he was more optimistic than usual for doing so — your easy back-and-forth, his slip-up from earlier forgotten. He wasn’t sure what to do with the quiet or you not looking at him properly, hairbrush working through your hair in short strokes. 

He’d saved around thirty lives tonight, and that was what he was good at. He was not good, and had never claimed to be good, at the aftermath of hurting a person he’d have put his own body between a stretcher and wall for, without meaning to, over something that had never been about the radiology fellow at all. 

He opted out of opening his locker and chose instead to lean his bicep against the locker, eyeing you in front of him. “Mad at me?” he murmured. 

You let out a short breath, shaking your head, and he tracked all your micro-expressions through the mirror. “On the clock?” 

“Well, we’ve both been off it for a while now,” he said, watching the shape of your mouth in the mirror, waiting for it to give something away. It didn’t. “But no. Asking as your —” He stopped himself, because ‘friend’ seemed not to be the honest word though it was the first one that popped up. “Off the clock. Whatever I am to you right now.”

You set the hairbrush down on the little shelf with more care than the moment needed. “It’s okay, Jack,” you said, shaking your head.

“Don’t think it is. Try again.”

You watched him for a second in the mirror, then you turned. 

“It’s just embarrassing,” you said, and the words came out smaller than anything he’d heard out of you in years. You crossed your arms over your chest. “I respect you and I hate that you’d think for one second I don’t take this place seriously.” Your voice cracked on the last word, just barely, and you pressed your lips together. “So, yeah. It’s embarrassing to have my attending confirming I’m exactly what people think I am.”

He was shaking his head before you could even finish the sentence. “Nobody thinks —”

“You do,” you said, voice rising slightly. “So, off the clock, I’m embarrassed, and tonight, I’m going to be your resident. Because I agree with you. It’s been unprofessional of me to keep dating within the hospital —” You threw your arms up halfway by your side, and you let out a short laugh that came out dry and wrong. “And I hate that you’ve probably been thinking it for four years.”

“I haven’t,” he said too fast. God, he’d come here to make tonight better for you, not to make you re-evaluate all your years working with him. “Sure, I thought it was none of my business how you spend your good nights off. Didn’t stop me from thinking they didn’t deserve ‘em.” 

You rolled your eyes. “You’re just saying that now ‘cause you feel bad.”

“Wish it were that simple,” he said, and chose to leave it unelaborated because it wasn’t that simple and he had no intention of explaining exactly why. “Half the time, you know it’s not gonna work out. You’re breaking my heart by making me watch you break yours.” 

You blinked, and he watched the fight loosen out of you by inches. “It’s just a free breakfast, Jack. Nothing to get your heart broken over.” 

Jack let out a huff through his nose, mouth opening to say what, he didn’t know. “Is that all? ‘Cause I can get you free breakfast for the rest of your life.” 

You laughed, disbelieving, through your nose, some of the night’s weight finally cracking off of you. “You’ve got a weird way of apologizing.” 

“Just to my favorite resident.” He pointed his index finger at you, lazy, and pushed himself off the lockers. His shoulder blades left a faint dust-print on the metal where he’d been leaning. He thumbed in the combination without looking at the dial — muscle memory, years of the same locker — and the door swung open with a rusted squeak. He pulled out his bag. “So?” 

“So what?” 

“You ditch the fellow.” He slung the bag up over his shoulder, close enough now that he caught the tail-end of the perfume you’d lightly spritzed over yourself. “I buy.”

You looked at him for a second too long, lips pushing to one side, as though you were gauging whether this was a bit or not, another line he’d tossed and wanted to let die on its own. He stood there, jaw set and features relaxing to show you he did mean it, more than he wanted to admit, if he was being honest with himself. 

“You’re serious.” 

“Do I look like I’m not?” He nodded once at your locker, your bag sitting on the shelf. “Grab your stuff. We’re going.” 

“Fine,” you said finally, reaching over and zipping your backpack all the way before throwing it over one shoulder. “Can you drive? I’ve been taking the subway.”

“Why?” he asked drily. “You’ve got a car.”

Jack realized, as he watched you slide in across from him and folding both hands around the coffee before it was all the way poured, that he’d never once been on a date where the woman had no idea it was one. 

It wasn’t lost on him what that made him, a man old enough to know better, letting a thing be one thing on his side of the table and another thing entirely on yours, saying nothing to square the difference. But he’d meant what he’d said, and he was going to feed you. 

You ordered a short stack, eggs, hash brown, decaf on loop. She wrote it down, definitely having heard worse from better.

“Thanks for the treat, Jack,” you said when Dina left, bringing the rim of your cup to your lips. “Don’t think I could’ve done another breakfast to let him down gently.”

“We have to make some changes to your lifestyle,” Jack replied, voice rough, as he eyed you. 

“Oh, yeah?” you murmured. “We?” 

“Well, I did have to deliver a note to you today. In all my life working here, that’s never happened.” 

You laughed around the rim of your cup. “In my defense, I don’t think anyone’s wrote me a note out of an OR either. That’s a first for both of us.”

“Glad we share the experience.”

Dina came by with a pot and topped you off without being asked, and placed the food in front of you. Jack watched you reach for the salt before your fork had even touched the eggs, shaking it twice over the plate.

“You’re gonna give yourself a stroke by forty.”

“You’re gonna give me a stroke right now if you comment on my food.” But you set the shaker down after the third shake, which he noticed and had to bite back a smile.

Dina dropped his plate in front of him — bacon, eggs, no pancakes — and you were reaching for it with a piece of your fork before she’d even finished setting his fork down. He gave you a faux-frown, picking up his fork and, without looking, spreading a piece of your hashbrown off the opposite plate in trade. He wasn’t sure when the two of you had started stealing bites and sips off of each other’s stuff, only that it’d started somewhere and calcified into something neither of you mentioned. 

“Rude,” you said, mouth already full.

“Learned it from you,” he muttered, nudging his plate an inch closer to your side of the table, which you took full advantage of. 

Dina’s radio crackled through something twangy and close-to-familiar behind the counter, competing with the clatter of a skillet somewhere in the back, the whole place smelling like batter and grease soaked into decades of countertop, syrup that had dried a hundred small amber rings nobody had ever fully scrubbed off. 

“I’ve never been here before.” You absentmindedly cut the hashbrown in half as your eyes raked over the place. “This a regular spot for you?”

“Since before you joined,” he said easily, but his brows furrowed as he realized he’d been coming here alone for years. He was in the same booth when he could get it, ordered the same order, and it struck to him only now, watching you eat your hashbrowns, how much smaller and less lonely a booth felt with you taking up the other half of it. “Used to be the only quiet I got on some weeks.” 

You hummed. “And now?”

“Guess the quiet’s pretty negotiable.” He shrugged. “I can go without it.”

You smiled down at your plate, something easy working at the corner of your mouth. A thread of syrup had gathered at the seam of your lips — you hadn’t noticed, too busy considering his answer — and before he’d cleared the impulse with the rest of himself, his thumb was already moving, catching it at the corner quickly, no different than when he swiped under your lashline for salt after a bad night.

You stayed still, having gotten used to his hands somewhere during your residency.

“You’re a mess,” he said, wiping his thumb off on the paper napkin folded under his elbow. 

“You’ve got coffee on your scrub top,” you said, eyes flicking down to his chest. His brows furrowed and he looked down, and you were right. “Pot, kettle.”

He’d been about to say something else, he could’ve sworn it, but had lost every word of it watching you smile so unguarded, free enough to let him look at you. He had to reach for his coffee just to have something to do with his hands. 

When the check came, folded in its little plastic tray, you both reached for it at once. Your hand landed flat over his knuckles. Neither of you moved it for a second, for his hand stayed exactly where it was, broad and unmoving under yours, and something unspoken passed through the two inches of fornica between your faces as he raised a brow at you. He slid the tray out from under you slowly.

“Said I’m buying,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

The drive back had been quieter than the one there had been. It was nearing ten in the morning, and he knew both of you had stayed up longer than intended, especially for two people who had to clock back in in a shorter amount of time than he deemed plausible to reset completely.

He’d cracked the window down an inch, and the air coming through carried the smell of wet pavement and the sound of a garbage truck grinding its gears three streets over. Your neighborhood, he was learning, woke up slow; there was a paperboy on a bike, a guy in scrubs different from yours locking up his own car after a shift that wasn’t at the PTMC, and Jack drove through it with two fingers loose over the wheel. Neither of you had bothered with the radio.

You’d gone somewhere billowy around your third cup of decaf, all the sharp edges of the night replaced with something looser and sleepier, and you gave him directions in a voice gone thick from exhaustion as you were likely starting to feel it behind your eyes. 

He pulled his car along the curb and let it idle, one shoe braced against the floorboard, watching the numbers of your building.

“Gonna sleep?” he asked.

“Gonna try.” You were already working the bag strap over your shoulder, hair falling loose out of the knot you’d put it up in at some point at the diner, strands of it catching the early light. “I’ve got no idea how you do this then take SWAT calls.”

“You’d be able to do it, too, if I put you on the field.” 

You mumbled something, letting your head drop against the window for a second, before picking itself back up. “Stop threatening me, Jack.” 

He watched you fight your eyelids, his mouth pulling up at the corners at the sight. “C’mon. Get inside before I gotta carry you up.”

You snorted, half-hearted. “You can’t. You’d throw your hip out.”

“Try me.” He was already rounding the hood before you’d gathered your bearings, boots loud on the quiet street, and you let out another laugh and let him get there first, too tired to argue about who gets to open what.

He walked you up the cracked path, palm settling at the small of your back, and you leaned back into it, half your weight given over without you noticing it. 

At the door, you fumbled with your keys out from under a granola wrapper and a capless pen, missed the lock twice, and gave up trying on the third. You turned to face him instead with your back against the frame and your bag slowly sliding off one shoulder.

“Thank you,” you said, words coming out loose and filtered by the exhaustion even as you tried to meet his eyes head-on. “For the — everything. The explanation. And the breakfast.” 

Jack felt his lips curve up, fingers flexing at his sides. “Anytime.” 

“And for driving me there — thank you. And for the drive back.” 

“Uh-huh. You gonna go inside?” he said, voice going quieter as he looked down at the ground, at how the toes of your shoes were almost touching. “Or keep thanking me until you fall asleep standing up?” 

You cocked your head to the side, your lips moving upwards into a fuller smile. His own mouth curved as he shifted on his feet slightly, closing the barely-there inch between his shoes and yours. 

“Jack?” 

He hummed, and you went up slightly onto your toes before he’d finished deciding what to do with you. Or maybe he’d moved in first, or maybe there was no real order to it at all. His mouth found yours somewhere in that uncertainty, slowly despite it, because he’d already worked out every version of this moment and this one had simply appeared in front of him.

His hand came up to cradle the side of your jaw, thumb settling into the soft hollow just beneath your ears. Your skin was warm despite the cold snap in the air, much softer than he’d let himself imagine, and he felt the exact second your breath caught against his mouth, a small stutter that made his fingers curve around your jaw, index resting against your cheekbone. 

He kept it slow, it was the only thing he had any real control over right now, the pace of it instead of the fact of it. He used what little he had left, dragging his mouth against yours, like he could somehow make up for four years of nothing by refusing to rush the first thirty seconds of something. His other hand found your waist, and his palm felt how your back curved into him, the hitch of your ribs on an inhale, and he pressed you back the last inch against the doorframe more to ground himself. 

Your fist found the front of his canvas jacket, dragging him in the last stubborn space he’d been too careful to close himself, and a sound came out of his chest that embarrassed him a little. He felt you smile against his mouth, and his entire body felt warm at having been caught enjoying this entirely as much as he was. 

He tilted his head so his forehead pressed against yours and pulled his mouth away. His lips jutted out slightly, feeling suddenly empty and unwilling to put the full distance back between the two of you.

Your eyes were still shut, and you were breathing unevenly. “Thank you,” you murmured. 

He huffed a short laugh, and in it, realized how breathless he, too, was. 

You tipped your chin back up, already chasing him.

Jack felt the want knot up inside him, greedy and unreasonably leaning back in to meet you halfway before the rest of him had caught up and made him stop. He made a small sound in his throat and pinched his eyes shut, letting you get right up to the edge of it, breath already tangling with his, wanting so badly to just let it happen, before his finger came up between you, pressed light against your bottom lip to stop you a hair short. It was more for his own sake than the words he remembered you telling someone years ago ringing in his head.

“Ah-ah.” His voice came out rough with want, entirely at odds with his actions. “Your rule. Only one kiss after the first date. I’m trying —” he exhaled hard, almost dramatically, “— trying real hard here to make it to the second.”

“Huh?” Your eyes peeled open. “This was a date?” 

“Best one you’ve had I’m guessing, with the way you’re breaking your rules.” His finger stayed right where it was, and he watched your eyes struggle to focus, still glassy from the kiss. He could feel the warm huff of breath breaking unsteady against his fingertip, could feel your mouth soft and parted underneath it, waiting on him. 

You pressed a peck against his finger instead, your mouth barely dragging against his skin as a shy smile formed behind it that he felt more than saw. “Maybe.”

“Well, good.” He smiled, despite himself, and pushed himself off your forehead, opting instead to press his lips there. “Get some sleep,” he murmured against your hairline, lips lingering a little longer there. “Might be able to get a full seven hours.” 

“Will you?” 

“Doubt it.” He pulled back enough to look at you properly, thumb tracing a line along your cheekbone — his touch feather-light, tracking the exact curve of it, memorizing the route — before he made himself drop his hand entirely, fingers curling loosely at his sides because suddenly he had no idea what to do with them without you under them. “Kinda got a lot on my mind now.”

“Yeah?” You bit back a smile, still not quite steady on your feet. “Anything you wanna share with the class?”

“Not a chance.” He bent a fraction and hooked two fingers under the strap of your bag where it’d slid down to your elbow, dragging it slowly back up to your shoulders, knuckles grazing your arms the whole way. “You’ll find out. Eventually.”

He forced himself to step off the mat — one step back, then the second, putting real distance between you now — forcing ease into his expression that he definitely wasn’t feeling. He stopped a few feet away from you anyway, unable to fully commit to walking away, watching you stunned and still in your doorway, mouth a little kiss-soft. He felt so completely helpless and pleased at the sight. “Text me when you’re up and I’ll get to planning date two.” 

You raised a hand into a wave, fingers curling in the air.

“Bye, Jack,” you said, and his name came out of your mouth softer than you probably meant it to, smooth and cushy the way it never sounded on shift.

Standing in front of the mirror, you smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from your outfit and told yourself it was because this was different. This was not a chance encounter anymore. This was not just a reckless decision made after having a few drinks, to soothe a bruised ego.

This was a date. An actual date with a man who fucked you like a god, and wanted more, wanted you.

The doorbell rang at precisely seven o’clock.

Of course he was on time. From what you had seen so far, it would have surprised you if he was not. You took one final look in the mirror and smiled, before rushing to open the door.

And immediately forgot every coherent thought and anything you were about to say.

Maekar stood on the other side, one hand tucked in the pocket of a dark coat. He looked entirely too handsome for a man who seemed permanently irritated by the existence of other people.

In his other hand he held a bouquet of the freshest roses you have ever seen. 

For a second, you simply stared. He cleared his throat. 

“These are for you.”

The gesture was so unexpectedly sweet that it caught you completely off guard. Your cheeks warmed.

“They are beautiful.” You accepted them carefully before leaning forward to kiss his cheek. “Thank you. I am just going to put them in a vase, will be right back!” 

You disappeared inside to find a vase, trying very hard not to smile even wider.

When you returned, Maekar’s eyes immediately found yours. His gaze softened almost immediately. The change was subtle, but you noticed it.

And, annoyingly, so did your heart.

“You look nice.” He said.

Not beautiful, not stunning, just nice. That coming from someone else would have been underwhelming. But coming from him, it felt sincere and more genuine than any elaborate compliment ever could. 

“You do not look too bad yourself.” You smiled. “Like you managed to get some proper rest after last night.”

He scoffed, but you could see his mouth twitch.

“Brat…” He muttered under his breath, making you giggle slightly.

When you got to the car, he opened the door for you.

“Where did you get your manners? Before Aegon's Conquest?”

Maekar gave you a long look. “Just get in the fucking car.”

You laughed and obeyed.

You liked that he was a gentleman. A grumpy gentleman.

The drive should have been awkward. You had known Maekar for barely twenty four hours and you slept with him. Now you were sitting in his passenger seat while he drove you to dinner like this was a completely normal progression of events.

Instead, it felt strangely easy.

The city drifted past outside the windows as Maekar navigated traffic with the same focused concentration he seemed to apply to everything else in life.

You stared shamelessly at him. His large hands rested loosely on the steering wheel. His brows were furrowed in concentration, though to be honest you suspected it looked like that even when he was relaxed.

“You know…” You said eventually. “For someone who spent most of last night acting like talking to me was a burden, you seem awfully committed to this date.”

“I warned you, I do not do things halfway.”

“Oh, that is so romantic of you.” You could not help but tease.

“You got flowers.”

“That is just one thing.”

“And now I am taking you out to dinner.”

“You are really setting the standard high, old man.”

A loud scoff escaped him, and you took that as a victory.

Silence settled comfortably for a few moments after that. The city drifted past the windows and you found yourself studying him again.

The lines at the corners of his eyes, his neat silver-blond beard, the strong line of his jaw, the broad shoulders that filled out his coat. He was definitely older than you would usually go for a man, but you did not mind.

Your gaze drifted lower then, almost unconsciously. There was no wedding ring. You noticed it the night before, and you noticed it again now.

But a man like Maekar did not simply exist in a vacuum. There had to be some history, past relationships, a marriage perhaps. An entire life you had yet to learn more of.

The thought lingered for a moment before curiosity got the better of you.

“Do you have kids?”

Maekar sighed immediately.

“What?” You asked, confused. 

“Nothing good has ever followed that question.”

“You are just being dramatic.” You retorted. 

“No, I am not.”

“Yes, you are.” You pouted. “Come on, tell me!”

His fingers tapped once against the steering wheel, as if he was contemplating whether answering was worth the headache.

“Six.” He almost whispered. 

You stared. “What?”

“I have six children.”

You nearly choked. “Six?!”

“Yes.”

“Six actual human children?”

His expression flattened. “No, I have six dragon children.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. “Holy shit, Maekar!”

“You fucking asked. No need to make a big deal out of it.”

“Six children?” You repeated.

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened and he stared at the road. You leaned back in the seat, whistling.

“That explains so much.”

He shot you a look. “Explains what?”

“The permanent scowl. It is there because you have spent years arguing with younger versions of yourself.”

He rolled his eyes, but you could see he was fighting a smile. Warmth spread in your chest at that. Then another thought occurred to you. 

“Which one is your favourite?”

Maekar just stared at you. “I do not have a favourite one.”

“Oh, you absolutely do.”

“No.”

“Come on. You know exactly which one.”

“I am not continuing this conversation.”

“Coward.” 

His grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“Fine, different question then!” You grinned. “How much do you know about them?”

He frowned.

“What kind of fucking question is that?”

“A normal one.”

“It is not.”

“It is. Humour me, please!”

Maekar sighed again.

“I know their birthdays.”

You nodded. “That is a good start.”

“Their favorite foods, and their allergies.”

“Expected.” Your smile softened slightly.

“The books they liked as children. The movies they still pretend not to like. I know which one calls when something goes wrong and which one pretends nothing is wrong until it has become a disaster.”

Something warm settled in your chest, because he answered without hesitation, without having to think. It was like those details lived permanently inside him.

You looked at him for a long moment.

“What?” He asked.

You shook your head.

“No, it is just…” You looked out the window briefly before glancing back at him. “You have no idea how incredibly attractive this is.”

The silence that followed was immediate, and you watched the tips of his ears turn red. Actually bright red. For one beautiful second, Maekar Targaryen looked completely caught off guard.

“Are you blushing?”

“Stop it.” He almost growled.

Your grin widened and his ears grew redder. And for the rest of the drive, Maekar refused to look at you.

The restaurant Maekar had chosen was nothing like the one where you had spent forty-something humiliating minutes waiting for a man who never arrived.

This place was quieter, the lighting was soft without being dim and the tables were spaced far enough apart to allow privacy. The low murmur of conversation never rose high enough to become distracting.

It felt like the type a restaurant someone like Maekar would choose because they genuinely liked it, not because it was currently fashionable.

This realization should not have affected you, but it did, because it meant he had put thought into this, into you.

The hostess greeted him by his surname. You immediately looked at him, following him to your table.

“She knew you. Do you come here often?”

“Not that much, no.”

Dinner unfolded slowly after that. It was mostly you who spoke, because he was not the sort of man who filled silence simply because it existed.

But when he spoke, you listened. And when you spoke, he listened too. And not the polite kind where someone nods while waiting for their turn to speak. The real kind, the kind that made you feel like every word mattered.

You told him about Rowan’s inability to mind her own business.

“She sounds exhausting.” He grumbled.

“She can be sometimes.” You nodded, sipping your wine. 

“Yet you are friends with her.”

“She is my best friend, and I love her.”

“Hmm.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means you are also exhausting.”

You nearly dropped your glass. “Excuse you, I am delightful!”

“You are relentless.”

“That does not sound like a compliment.”

“It was not.”

You could not help but laugh at his honesty.

Later, the conversation drifted toward books, then travel, then work. Then somehow to memories. You discovered Maekar spent years coaching various sports teams because one child had joined and the others eventually followed.

“Are you telling me you volunteered for that?”

“Fuck no, I was coerced.”

“By your children?”

“They are surprisingly effective negotiators, the little fuckers.”

You laughed. The sound earned one of those rare, fleeting smiles from him. And suddenly you wanted another one, then another. 

You found yourself watching him while he spoke, the movement of his hands. The slight furrow between his brows whenever he concentrated. The dry humor that appeared unexpectedly and disappeared just as quickly.

Every glimpse beneath the stoic exterior only seemed to make the problem worse.

Because for the life of you, you could not understand why you suddenly wanted more. Not just another date, or more attention.

You truly wanted more of him, his thoughts, his company, his opinions. You wanted to know what made him laugh when nobody was watching. Whether he made coffee before breakfast or after. Whether he was impossible to deal with when he got sick. Whether he let people take care of him at all.

The thoughts arrived completely uninvited. And once they started, they refused to leave.

It was absurd. You had known him for barely more than twenty four hours. That was nothing, a blink, a moment. 

And yet every time he looked at you, every time he remembered some small detail you had mentioned, every time that guarded expression softened for half a second, you found yourself wanting to know what existed underneath all of it.

By the time dinner ended, you felt slightly unsteady. Not because of the wine, though you were sure it had not helped, but because of him.

The drive back was quieter than the rest of the evening. The city slid past in soft streaks of gold and white. Maekar drove with the same steady focus. Every now and then, you caught him glancing at you, and you would glance at him. 

When you finally reached your building, the car rolled to a stop and the silence changed.

You turned your head slowly, and found him already looking at you.

The air between you felt different now. It was charged in a way that made your skin prickle.

“Are you going to kiss me, old man?” You asked softly, tilting your head. “Or are you going to continue staring at me like that?”

His eyes darkened slightly, and then he simply leaned over.

The kiss was immediate, firm and unapologetically him. His hand came up to your jaw, steadying you as if he needed to make sure you stayed there, that this was real. You melted into it without thinking. Then just as quickly, he pulled back a little, far enough to make you chase the absence of him. His thumb lingered against your cheek before he withdrew completely.

He got out of the car first. You stayed for a second longer, trying to collect yourself, trying to remember how breathing worked normally. He opened your door again without a word.

You walked together to your apartment, the distance between you small enough to feel dangerous, close enough to become aware of your own breath.

“Thank you for dinner.” You said when you reached your door, smiling. “I had a great time.”

“You are welcome.”

The silence was different this time, somewhat heavier. His gaze held yours without wavering. And for a second you saw it, the raw hunger underneath everything. How he did not seem capable of wanting anything halfway. This sent a strange rush through you, excitement and fear.

Because suddenly you could imagine how easy it was to fall in love with him. The thought hit you hard enough to steal your breath and Maekar noticed.

He cupped your cheek with a carefulness that did not match the weight behind his stare. His thumb brushed over it gently, eyes flitting to your mouth and then back up.

Maekar said your name, and it sounded so different in his voice. It made your pulse stutter.

“Yes?”

For a moment you thought he was going to kiss you again. You wanted him to kiss you again. You wanted to feel him again.

“You should go inside.”

Your brows shot up. “What?”

A faint curve touched his mouth.

“You came up with me all the way just to send me to bed? Alone?!” You let out a short, incredulous laugh and pushed at his chest, but he would not move away.

He huffed. “I brought you home.”

“Same thing.” You pouted, before saying quietly. “I was hoping for more than just a kiss…”

“And what were you hoping for?” He asked, voice lower now.

You felt your back hit the wall, your eyes not leaving his. 

“You know what…” You whispered, looking at his mouth. “I want all of you.”

“Greedy girl.” He huffed a laugh. “You had my attention all night, and you still want more.”

“I could never get enough of you.” You admitted. “Is that so strange?”

His grip tightened slightly at your jaw and the way he was looking at you sent a jolt to your core. He did not answer you. Instead, he lunged forward, pressing his lips against yours hard. You gasped into his mouth, a sound that was swallowed instantly as he devoured you. His tongue forced its way past your lips to claim every inch of your mouth. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He pressed you against the wall, leaving no space between you. He kissed you with a starving intensity, his teeth grazing your bottom lip, pulling and nipping at it until you whimpered.

When he finally pulled away, the sudden absence of his heat felt like a physical blow. You were left staring at him, your lips swollen and tingling, completely disoriented. Maekar rested his forehead against yours.

“Do you want to come inside?” You asked breathlessly.

His eyes held yours for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted. 

He did not say yes. He did not say no. He simply pressed his lips against yours, the space between you disappearing again.

Your heartbeat quickened, hard and loud enough that you were certain he could hear it too.

“It’s good you came in,” Robby could sense the hesitation in your voice. The kind of hesitation he hears in most unsure parents' voices when they think a trip to the emergency room is unwarranted or unjustified. “A mother's instinct is usually to be trusted.” He smiled softly as he stepped a little closer to the bedside where your six-year-old lay with teary, tired eyes, a clogged nose and some weird-looking skin irritation. 

Robby does a quick visual examination, noting quickly that your son seems to be having trouble breathing. He could practically hear the pneumonia in his little lungs. 

“What’s your name, mum?” Robby asked as he shone a small but bright white light into your son's eyes. He wasn’t perplexed about this ailment at all; it had to be pneumonia with a touch of contact dermatitis from something he’d come into contact with. A plant from school perhaps? or a cream you’d used. 

“Y/n.” You replied. The name rang through Robby’s ears like a beautiful bell bellowing at midnight. The kind of ring that makes little ideas appear out of thin air. If he were a cartoon character…Robby swore a little lightbulb appeared above his head. 

What are the odds? A beautiful woman with a young son who just so happened to have the very same name that not three nights ago, Robby had practically forced out of Jack Abbot's mouth with the threat of a new night shift resident. 

“You look a little worn out too? After we draw some blood and get this little guy sorted, I think there’s a cup of coffee with your name on it at the nurses' station.” He smiled, pocketing his pen light. 

“Oh,” You sighed out a small chuckle. “These bags are permanent, Dr Robinavitch—“ 

“Please, call me Robby.” He replied quickly as he walked around the examination room looking for all the bits he needed for a blood draw. “It’s my treat, there’s nothing I can do for the permanent lack of sleep, but a little caffeine is good for the body, brain and soul.” 

“That sounds great, thank you, Robby.” You shifted in your chair to move closer to your son's side. His little hand now safely placed in yours. 

“I’ll uh, I’ll be right back,” Robby caught the sight of his senior night shift attending heading out at the end of his shift. The very same night shift attending that Robby knew would want more than anything to be informed about this particular patient. “Excuse me.” He held up one finger and was gone before you could even say okay. 

“Abbot!” Robby bellowed as he did a hop, skip and jump action past the nurses' station, where Dana was getting caught up to speed for her shift. “Hey—Jack!” 

Jack sighed softly to himself before he stopped in his tracks. His old army bag was slung haphazardly over his left shoulder. 

“Brother, I am five feet from freedom here, don’t do this to me.” Jack turned with a growl. He was just trying to get home after a long ass night. “I leave this emergency department in your capable hands.” 

“Not so fast,” Robby cooed as he clamped his hand down on Jack's backpackless shoulder. “I need a consult, sick six-year-old presenting with possible pneumonia—“ 

“Nice one, sounds like you already have a clear diagnosis, what the fuck do you need me for, man, I’m off duty till seven!” Jack whisper-hissed through his teeth. His leg had been killing him since three, and Jack could practically smell the bacon and egg roll from Caramels calling his name. 

“I’m pretty sure it’s your Y/n and her son, Oliver? Yeah—yeah, I think I’ve diagnosed that too,” Robby spoke as he rubbed the back of his head casually, like he was still trying to fake like he didn’t know it was you from the second he heard your name. “But I thought maybe you’d wanna come suss it out for yourself in case I’m delusional and can’t put two and two together.” Robby smiled as he watched Jack's entire demeanour change. It softened at the mere thought of you. 

“You said pneumonia?” Jack followed up as he walked into Robby’s shoulder, making sure to make contact just to get back at the dick-like foolishness he had presented with. “And you're sure it’s Ollie?” 

“Oh, you’re already on a nickname basis with her kid?” Robby’s eyebrows raised as he followed his own emergency contact back to the exam room. “I’ll be damned, do I hear wedding bells?” 

Jack didn’t reply; all he did was make strides to where Robby had come from. Worry had already begun to take its rightful place inside his chest. Sure, Jack Abbot knew how to keep a calm and collected composure…but not when it had anything to do with the family he’d started to feel a part of. 

It was casual. Something new. It wasn’t something that you had considered becoming serious or anything more than just two people spending some casual alone time together. 

Casual. It was supposed to be a no-strings-attached thing. No feelings. No baggage. No attachments. 

That’s how it started anyway…it didn’t stay that way for very long. How could it when Jack was all in from day one. He made that decision on his own terms. All it took was one date with you to know he was in this for the rest of his overextended life. One leg down be damned. 

“Hey,” it was the softest hey Robby had ever heard. “What are you guys doin' here?” Jack asked as he walked in with a proud chest and enough confidence to tell Robby everything he needed to know and more. 

This was Jack Abbot's found family. A second chance at all the things he lost when he lost a physical part of himself. 

“I didn’t want to bother you,” You started in a near panic. “He’s been up all night. I made an appointment with our primary for Wednesday but—“ you didn’t get a chance to speak before Jack was dropping to his knees beside your chair. 

“I’m your damn primary now, alright?” 

You knew well enough that when Jack Abbot said something, he meant it with full conviction. All you could do was hold back a small quicker with pressed together lips as Jack placed a hand to the back of your head and drew your forehand to his lips. 

Robby was rendered speechless. He’d never seen this side of Jack before. 

“Uh, not to interfere, but I should probably continue my work up on Oliver here so we can get some sort of treatment plan in action.” 

“I can do that, you go ahead and annoy some other attending for the rest of your shift, I’ve got this handled now.” Jack didn’t let Robby finish, and Robby knew better than to argue. He threw his hand up in surrender as Jack stood and looked around at where Robby had organised the equipment needed for a blood draw. 

“How long did you say he’s been like this?” Jack asked as he looked down at the little boy, half asleep in the hospital bed that made him look ten times smaller. 

“He was fine yesterday, I thought it was just a cold he’d picked up at school a few days ago, but—“ You paused as panic threatened to burst out into tears; you felt like you’d failed as a mother. “But he just hasn’t been himself since yesterday afternoon; he’s been up all night.” 

“Yeah, he’s gonna be alright, I promise,” Jack cooed as he placed a comforting hand on Oliver’s forehead. “We’ll pump him up with some fluids, antibiotics, and we’ll go from there. Good call bringing him in, I just wish you would have called me.” 

“Jack—“ You sighed, it wasn’t that you didn’t want to…it was more like you were afraid if you did…he wouldn’t answer. 

“Anytime, anything, anywhere.” Is all Jack said as he worked on your son. He was locked in like a madman on a mission. Healing hands that worked miracles on patients all night now worked over your sons like he had something to prove. 

And he did have something to prove…he wanted to prove to you that he was head over fucking heals for you. Making sure Ollie got the best care he could was only the tip of the iceberg. 

“Alright, Bud, I’m gonna need you to make a tight fist for me so I can take some blood,” Jack told your son what he was doing. “But you’re gonna need to look over at mum while I do that, alright?” 

“Isn’t my blood supposed to stay inside me?” Ollie mumbled as he felt the man who’d made him feel safe enough to call family tied off his blood pressure. All Jack could do was laugh as a big grin took over his tired face. 

“Yeah, most of the time, but right now I gotta take some so we can run some tests to see what’s making you feel so miserable, alright?” 

“Will it hurt?” Ollie asked as he looked towards you. 

“A tiny little bee sting, but after that? Nope, plus I can do this with my eyes closed,” Jack looked up at you with a teasing wink of self-reassurance. “But maybe just one eye,” He caught himself flirting as he popped in the butterfly needle. “See? Bet you didn’t even feel that, huh?” 

“Nope.” 

“Good, now I need to talk to your mum outside in the hall for a few minutes, but Princess is gonna come in and get some fluids set up to make you feel better, sound alright with you?” Jack asked your son as if the kid had any say in the matter. 

“Is she a real princess?” Ollie asked as he looked over to where Jack was looking at the small vial of blood. 

“Yeah, Bud, only the real deal for you,” Jack replied as he gestured for you to follow him out. You did just that, but not without saying a loving bye to Oliver. 

It wasn’t long before the two of you felt the weight of the entire emergency department’s eyes on you. Jack's day shift peers, who saw him as something of a traumatised enigma, all looked over like a mythical creature had just appeared. A rarity that was someone on a personal level with Dr. Jack middle name unknown, Abbot. 

“He’s probably going to be admitted for a few days,” Jack started as he eyed down whoever he could lock eyes with. First it was Santos…then Dana. “I can assure you he’ll be fine, but I wanna keep an eye on him for at least twenty-four hours to make sure he’s reactive to treatment. 

“Oh,” Your heart sank into your stomach at the thought of your son needing to stay here in the sterile, fluorescent environment. “Um—am I able to stay with him?” You didn’t know how any of this worked. This was all new territory for you. Up until now, Oliver never needed to be hospitalised. Hell, he’d never broken a bone so much as caught a cold. 

“Absolutely,” Jack turned to you, recognising the guilt that plastered itself across your face. “But hey, on a more important note,” Jack tried to lighten the mood. “Who’s running the café this morning if you’re here?” 

“Adam,” You replied politely as Jack reached for his phone. You caught the background clear as day. You, Jack, and Oliver at the park. “Why? And how is that more important than anything that’s going on right now?” 

“Well, I need to know whose handwork I’m gonna fork out the Uber up charge for.” Jack doesn’t look up from his phone. He’s already got Caramels cafe, the cafe you owned, up on his phone. “Two bacon and egg bagels, an iced coffee and a long black coming right up.” 

“I guess you haven’t eaten, have you?” Neither had you. How could you possibly eat when all you’d been doing was worrying yourself sick over Oliver’s battle with whatever flu or cold or illness this was? 

“Honey, it feels like I haven’t eaten since March,” Jack teased as he walked with you over to the nurses' station. Dana, with all her bright joy and glee, waited patiently for Jack to introduce you. “Dana, this is—“ He paused for a moment, girlfriend never felt right. It felt like a title reserved for high school lovers. “Partner, my partner Y/n, her son is just about to start a round of fluids and antibiotics,” Jack updated the woman whose eyes never left you. “Make it known, VIP treatment for the kid in room three until peds has a bed.” 

“Consider it done,” Dana replied. “I wish I could say I’ve heard all about you,” she continued as she smiled your way. “But Abbot here has an issue with personal and professional.” 

“Yeah, I think we both share that same issue.” You replied as you looked around yourself at everyone staring your way. “Do I have something on my face?” 

“No, darlin',” Dana chuckled. “It’s just not every day this department gets to see into the private life of Private Ryan here.” 

“Oh, eat me,” Jack growled as he motioned the two of you back towards where your son's room was. “C’mon, I don’t want these pariahs giving you the creeps any longer.” 

By the time you got back to your son, Princess had started an IV bag of fluids. He looked so small. So tired. But there was a sense of calm that came over you, knowing Jack was taking care of him. 

“You guys hang tight, I’ll be back with our food in a moment.” The pain in his leg hadn’t gone away, not for a moment. But the pain didn’t come close to the sheer amount of love that was pumping through Jack's veins. 

Adrenaline itself couldn’t compare. 

“Hey, Jack?” You couldn’t let him go without a kiss. You reached for his cheeks and danced the pad of your thumb over his greying scruff. “I love you, thank you for being here.” 

Jack swore his heart had skipped a beat. It didn’t normally do that. But when he felt your lips on his in view of all the emergency department to see, he couldn’t help but blush. 

“I’m never gonna hear the end of this, you know that, right?” He whispered in your ear as he drew you in closer for a hug. One of the hugs he reserved just for you. “And this breaks like three code of conduct rules, fraternising with patients.” 

“I’m not the patient,” You clearly reminded him. “I’m your partner.”